2017 was the year of the ICO and when Bitcoin really started to surge into new all-time highs
According to research firms ICO's raised more than $4.2 Billion during 2017, which is quite a bit more than the $256 Million which were raised I total from 2014 - 2016.
The funds was raised for various projects ranging from finance to media and social networks. Sure there are more and more regulations coming to the industry, which may clamp down on the less upfront or lets call it dodgy ICO's. It will be come more difficult to raise funds through ICO's in the coming year, as ICO's will have to adhere to more rules, but this will also mean that we will have above board companies trying to raise money.
What will 2018 hold for the industry.
I have recently read a very interesting article 2018 : The Year of the CryptoCurrency Craze,where the writer raised a very important point. All new technologies goes through certain stages, and one of these phases, is that we usually believe that the new technology can be used it for everything in life. As a result this causes an explosion of growth and happened to email, search engines, social media, and if we go back in time, it also happened to Faxes, Telephones, Television only to mention a few.
There is a fair chance that we will in 2018 find out what the best application is for Bitcoin and other currencies. I am still a firm believer, that Bitcoin, should become the new Gold Standard, and that there will be multiple altcoins, each for a specific reason. I do not believe that there will only be one global crypto currency, that will be used for everything.
If we look at Crypto Exchanges, we will see that there most Altcoins, can only be sold for Bitcoin, which means that Bitcoin is already playing a dominant role, of measuring other coins values against Bitcoin. I can see various coins surviving in the long term, with the important characteristic, of having a very specific role. Look at Steem for example, in my opinion, Steem will dominate the social environment, and I can clearly see how SMT's will play a massive role in 2018, with more and more websites, starting to use the Smart Media Tokens, to incentivise there users on their sites.
If we look at a coin like IOTA (and I am not saying IOTA will survive), but a coin targeting the Internet of Things, will dominate that the IOT market. Even something like we are doing in @SportsPodium, might dominate the Sports Market. The golden thread between all these coins is that each have a very specific target market and reason for existance.
All we can do is wait and see how 2018 plays out, but one thing that I can promise you is that 2018 will have be even more exciting that the previous years in Crypto.
Happy Steeming
