China-based Blockchain and crypto startups raised a whopping $1.11 billion during H1 2019, accounting for as much as 33.2% of the total funds raised during this period – according to the latest Blockchain and crypto report by InWara, released on 1st July.
In comparison, US-based Blockchain and crypto startups just raised $255 million and accounted for 7.6% of the total funds raised. On the heels of the US is Singapore, UAE, and the UK has raised $232 million, $231 million and $212 million respectively.
Overall, there has been an uptick in the funds raised by Asian countries especially new jurisdictions like UAE and India. So what does this mean? That entrepreneurs in these countries are becoming more aware and open to non-traditional funding mechanisms. In the future, due to the conducive regulatory environment in these countries (except India) we can expect more token offering projects.
Clearly, China leads the token offering space in terms of funds raised by these projects. But there’s a catch. As much as 90% of these funds were raised one single project – Bitfinex’s Initial Exchange Offering.
Although China leads the world in terms of funds raised, it doesn’t have the highest number of token offerings.
The geography with the highest number of token offerings is the US with 66 projects, followed by Singapore and the UK with 52 and 50 projects respectively.
What’s surprising is that in the US, despite regulatory authorities have taken a hard stance on tokenized fundraising, a majority of the projects from the US are ICOs and IEOs. The U.S Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) believes all ICO projects qualify as security offerings as they pass the Howey test. But the caveat here is if the company launching the ICO offered its crypto tokens to U.S citizens as investment vehicles. Thus being liable under U.S Federal Securities Laws.
