US and certain Asian countries such as Singapore, South Korea and China had ruled the domain of ICOs in 2017, until stringent regulations quenched ICO projects in all these countries except for Singapore, where the government’s friendly stance towards fintech has enabled a favourable environment for the growth of crypto businesses. In 2018 however, it is Europe, which has surprised the world by outperforming these crypto hotspots with its share of successful Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).
Report from Fabric Ventures
According to a report by Fabric Ventures, Europe launched successful ICOs worth $4.1 billion, whereas its competitors US and Asia had token sales worth $2.6 billion and $2.3 billion respectively. The performance of the continent for the most part of 2017 was slow, but it picked up in December 2017 and went on vigorously till February 2018.
Among the top performers were Malta and Gibraltar, with ICOs were $300 million. UK and Switzerland performed exceptionally too, with ICOs grossing $490 million and $556 million in the two countries respectively. Lithuania raked in $271 million in token sales.
Switzerland has been in the news in the crypto-sphere for its crypto and blockchain-positive developments. Recently, the world’s “Exchange Traded Product” (ETP) was launched to the public in Switzerland. The ETP is made of six major cryptocurrencies - Bitcoin, XRP, Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. Malta, the island nation, passed three cryptocurrency bills this year to expedite the development of its blockchain sector, thus, reinforcing its status as one of the friendliest blockchain nations of the world.
Among the advantages that Europe has over US is programming talent. There are 4.4 million developers in US, whereas Europe has 5.5 million developers. Also, Europe has been in an advantageous position because of US’ strict regulatory governance against cryptocurrencies, and India and China’s absolute ban on them.
According to the report, London and Berlin have emerged as core hubs of blockchain and cryptocurrency projects. London boasts of projects like Colony, Ntropy, Flying Carpet, Verisart, Everledger, Provenance, Electron, Blockchain.com and Elliptic, while Berlin has Gnosis, Ocean Protocol, Parity Technologies, Golem, Slock.it, Raiden, Lisk, Cosmos, Centrifuge,
Energy Web Foundation, etc.
2019 is going to be yet another eventful year for cryptocurrencies as many countries are expected to declare their stand on them and establish a framework to regulate them. Europe already has several crypto-friendly countries and we’re hoping that more will join their league.
Bittoria is a cryptocurrency exchange which will enable cryptocurrency enthusiasts to trade in BTC, ETH, XRP and LTC with USD, EUR, GBP and CHF. The exchange will also roll out support for crypto-to-crypto transactions on the same platform soon in European jurisdictions initially and then expand to other parts of the world. Stay tuned for updates!