Development of an Algorithm for Assessing the Risk of Investing in ICO Projects

Student: Roptanov Ivan

Faculty: St.Petersburg School of Economics and Management

Educational Programme: Economics (Bachelor)

Year of Graduation: 2018

Blockchain startups have adopted Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) as a method to attract early capital. Crypto-tokens which are offered at these public sales are designed to fill a widely varied set of roles on different platforms. Some tokens are like currencies, others are more like securities, and others have completely new properties. The technological vision of each company requires a token with unique properties and usage. Due to the rapid growth of popularity, ICO campaigns have raised more than 1.2 billion dollars in 2017. However, many of them do not have a product at all. Each sum of invested money in ICO is a strong risk because there is no strict regulation at the market. The main point of this paper is to develop an algorithm which will minimize the risk of investing in ICO projects by identifying patterns which will help to reveal fully-trustful projects and those which looks like scam projects.

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