A recently published report by CoinGecko has shown that initial coin offering (ICO) projects have raised a significantly smaller amount of money in the third quarter of this year, when compared to the second one.

The report, first spotted by Finance Magnates, revealed that in the second quarter of this year 606 projects raised funds, 267 were successful, and a total of $7.73 billion were raised. It adds that in the third quarter 388 projects tried to raise funds, and 193 were successful. A total of $1.59 billion were raised.

While the near 80% difference is significant, most of the funds raised in the second quarter were attributed to EOS, which raised a total of $4 billion through a year-long ICO. Since it concluded in Q2 2018, the report likely considers the money was raised then.

The tokens of 34 projects that raised funds last quarter reportedly managed to be listed on cryptocurrency exchanges, although only seven managed to keep on trading at a value equal to or above the amount of money raised. This, the report notes, is because most investors sell their tokens as soon as they’re listed.

Per CoinGecko’s report, a user who invested $100 into the tokens of each of these startups would currently be down $740. Most ICO projects, 35, were based in Singapore, while 18 were in the UK. The US and Malta, which recently established a full regulatory framework for distributed ledger technology (DLT), hosted six projects.

Crypto Market Insights

The report further noted that out of the five top cryptocurrencies – bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), XRP, bitcoin cash (BCH), and EOS – most lost a significant part of their value since the beginning of the year. Bitcoin cash reportedly lost the most, as it’s down 78%. EOS, on the other hand, is only down about 25%.

Year-over-year, however, four out these five cryptos are still in the green with the exception of Ethereum’s ether. According to CryptoCompare data, the cryptocurrency is currently down little over 30% in said period, as it’s currently trading at $199.2.

Ethereum is notably the dominant network used by token issuers, as over 85% of projects used it. These, research has suggested, sold “almost all” of the ether they raised, and have been sitting on unrealized gains.

While the price of most cryptocurrencies has been steadily dropping, trading volumes seem to have been highly volatile. The top three cryptocurrency exchanges, OKEx, Huobi, and Binance, have been relatively stable.