Is the ICO era returning? Public token sales are raising billions of dollars again
Date: 2025-07-24 Author: Henry Casey Categories: BUSINESS
This amount makes this round one of the largest in the crypto market this year. The peculiarity of the token sale was that retail investors from most countries could participate in it, except for the US, UK, Iran and some others. To participate, only identity verification (KYC) was required. This is noticeably different from recent years, when initial placements were available mainly to large investors amid increased regulation, the authors of Fortune note.
The Pump.fun event recalled the times of ICOs - initial coin offerings - about a decade ago. Then anyone could launch their own token and attract funds from investors. ICOs have become the start of many significant projects, but they have also been accompanied by massive frauds and projects with a dubious future. Whether the ICO era will return in its previous form is an open question.
In traditional business, entering the public market occurs through an IPO - first, funds are raised from private investors, then the company scales up and goes public, undergoing careful control from financial regulators. In the crypto world, ICOs provided a faster and less bureaucratic way to raise capital: companies issued millions of tokens and sold them directly to investors.
An example of a classic ICO was the Ethereum offering in 2014, when the founders raised over $18 million, widely distributing tokens among users for the first time. Later, other blockchain companies raised tens and hundreds of millions, and sometimes billions. But among them there were also failed projects, whose tokens quickly depreciated.
Regulators, especially the SEC in the US, have begun to view many tokens as securities that require mandatory registration and disclosure. As a result, the SEC has recovered billions of dollars from investors and filed lawsuits, for example, against Telegram, which raised $1.7 billion in 2018 but was forced to return the money.
In response to the tightening of legislation, crypto companies began to present tokens as commodities similar to gold or oil, conducting private placements for large investors and airdrops. However, with the change of the US administration to Donald Trump, the pressure on the crypto market decreased, and the fear of regulators eased for a while.
Over the past year, a new wave of platforms has emerged that provide access to investments not only to large venture funds, but also to a wider circle of qualified investors. For example, investor Cobie is creating the Echo platform, positioned as a new platform for ICOs. The Plasma and MegaETH projects have already raised hundreds of millions of dollars there in just minutes.
Pump.fun founder Alon Cohen believes that the current placement sets a new stage for the ICO market. At the same time, experts who remember the wave of fraudulent projects in 2017-2018 are cautious about assessing the situation. Now, according to Omar-Shakib Zahir from SecondLane, the market has become fairer: many token sales have real businesses and income behind them. Austin Feder from DoubleZero shares a similar opinion, noting that it is rare to find projects without income or a product now.
However, Feder warns: “In the crypto market, everything can change quickly, and positive trends can easily turn negative when unfavorable factors combine.”
Thus, the return of mass public token sales may open a new chapter in the development of the crypto industry, but it requires vigilance and a reasonable approach from investors and regulators.
