🚀 Review of the 2017 ICO Boom + Regulatory Implementation

——The Craziest and Most Chaotic Year in Crypto History

1. What is ICO?

ICO (Initial Coin Offering, Initial Token Offering) is essentially a project team raising funds from the public by issuing tokens, with investors participating using BTC / ETH in exchange for project tokens.

In 2017:

  • Write a whitepaper
  • Issue an ERC-20 token
  • Build a website + Telegram
    And you could raise millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars

ICO became the blockchain version of "retail VC".

2. How Did the ICO Boom Erupt?

1️⃣ Ethereum ERC-20 Standard Matures

  • Extremely low cost to issue tokens
  • Smart contracts lower the financing threshold
  • Anyone can "launch a project"

2️⃣ Bull Market Sentiment + Get-Rich-Quick Effect

  • ETH from ~$8 → ~$1,400
  • Early ICO investments returned 10x–100x
  • FOMO sentiment completely out of control

3️⃣ Retail Investors Enter the Market on a Large Scale for the First Time

  • Investment logic extremely simplified:
    "As long as it can get listed on an exchange, you can make money"

3. The Insanity of 2017 ICOs

📊 Data Overview:

  • 2017 ICO total financing: Approximately $6–7 billion
  • Individual project financing:
    • Filecoin: $257 million
    • Tezos: $232 million
  • Many projects sold out in minutes

📉 Real Results:

  • Over 90% of ICO projects failed or went to zero
  • Whitepaper plagiarism and rug pulls rampant
  • "Air coins" and "Ponzi coins" rampant

4. Regulatory Implementation (Key Turning Point)

🇨🇳 China "94 Regulation" (2017.9.4)

  • Clearly defines ICO as illegal financing
  • Complete halt to ICOs
  • Requires exchanges to delist RMB business

➡️ Directly ends the domestic ICO frenzy

🇺🇸 US SEC Takes Action

  • Proposes Howey Test applies to ICOs
  • Multiple projects deemed unregistered securities offerings
  • Subsequent investigations into Telegram, EOS, etc.

➡️ ICOs essentially "die" in the US

🌍 Global Regulatory Trends

  • Japan, South Korea, Singapore successively introduce regulatory frameworks
  • Require KYC / compliance / information disclosure
  • Era of wild growth ends

5. What Happened After ICO?

❌ ICO Model Declines

  • Retail trust collapses
  • Compliance costs extremely high
  • Project financing difficulty increases

✅ New Models Emerge

  • IEO (Exchange-backed)
  • STO (Security Token Offering)
  • IDO / DeFi Launch
  • VC + Private Equity Dominance

6. Profound Impacts Left by the ICO Boom

Impact on the Industry

  • Promotes formation of global regulatory frameworks
  • Crypto financing moves toward professionalization
  • Investor education significantly improved

Lessons for the Market

  • Technology ≠ Investment Value
  • No Regulation ≠ Decentralization
  • Bull markets amplify all human weaknesses