Infographic: ICO Roundup!

Initial coin offerings, or ICOs for short, are the latest craze in the cryptocurrency world so let’s try to make sense of the current situation surrounding ICOs and their interesting market

One of the most hotly debated (as well as most controversial) aspects of the current cryptocurrency sphere are so-called initial coin offerings, also known simply as ICOs. These forms of digital fundraising employ the use of cryptocurrencies in a way that allows project owners to raise bitcoins or ethers from thousands upon thousands of future users interested in the app being developed.

Unsurprisingly, ICOs have become a popular means of fundraising for startups in recent years. The lack of regulation allowed them to raise money quickly in return for so-called tokens, also described as digital certificates — at least that was the case until recently.

Nowadays, the ICO boom is beginning to stall a bit as a growing number of regulators worldwide turned their attention to ICOs and have decided to come into action. China, which is a country that once led the world in the number of active ICOs, recently decided to ban these fundraising altogether.