When we kicked off 2017, bitcoin had just topped $1,000 for the first time in three years.
It was a signal to the market, but cryptocurrency still lacked serious interest from mainstream banks and institutional investors. Today, we’re looking at a very different market and, as one of the largest liquidity providers in the space, Cumberland has had a front row seat to the evolution — or revolution, depending on your perspective.
Over the last several years, anyone who was following cryptocurrency or involved at all in the markets alluded that "Wall Street" was coming. This was the year we actually saw this start to happen, driven by the new ventures, burgeoning demand and market maturation that generally accompany a rapid run up in price.
We also saw a shift this year as the interest in bitcoin gave rise to interest in other cryptocurrencies, with a cottage industry of new products and services emerging around them.
As people embraced bitcoin and ether, other cryptocurrencies began to attract investors, which eventually led capital into different and diverse projects. If you didn’t like certain attributes of bitcoin for whatever reason, other tokens and protocols were more readily available in 2017 than ever before, and this demand came sooner than was really expected.
There are thousands of cryptocurrencies that exist today for a wide array of utilities and use cases, and over the last year, we have seen an increase in demand for these cryptocurrencies. We believe that an overall interest in decentralized technologies, community investment and collaboration, and the dramatic increase in the market capitalization of the crypto ecosystem have all fueled this acceleration.
This year's action also gave rise to ICOs, an entirely new layer to the ecosystem. We've seen the number of ICO white papers increase dramatically over the last year as entrepreneurs look to fund a dizzying array of projects.
According to Icodata.io, the number of funds raised increase by over 6,000% and the number of deals issued increase by over 2,500% year-over-year.
