ABSTRACT We analyse the determinants of success for 630 ICOs undertaken from August 2015 up until the end of December 2017, a period in which the market for ICOs grew to an unprecented level. We find evidence that ICOs are more successful in raising funding when they disclose more information to investors (i.e. have a higher profile rating), have a higher quality rating by cryptocurrency experts, have a pre-ICO GitHub repository, organise a presale, refrain from offering bonus schemes, have shorter planned token sale durations and have a larger project team. ICOs that disclose more information to investors and that have a higher quality rating at the time of the campaign show stronger ex-post performance. Longer-term project success is positively impacted by having a pre-ICO GitHub repository, a shorter planned token sale duration and having a larger project team at the time of the ICO, although these results depend on the ex-post success measure used. We conclude that for entrepreneurs it is important to make an ICO as transparent as possible and that profile and expert ratings are a valuable means to overcome the information asymmetry problems associated with token sales.

中文翻译：

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是什么决定初始代币发行的成功？

摘要我们分析了从2015年8月到2017年12月结束的630个ICO成功的决定因素，在此期间ICO市场增长到了一个空前的水平。我们发现有证据表明，当ICO向投资者披露更多信息（即具有较高的知名度），被加密货币专家获得更高的质量评级，拥有ICO GitHub之前的存储库，组织预售，提供奖金计划，缩短计划的代币销售时间并拥有更大的项目团队。在活动进行时向投资者披露更多信息并具有较高质量评级的ICO表现出更强的事后表现。ICO之前的GitHub存储库对长期项目的成功产生了积极影响，缩短计划的代币销售持续时间，并在ICO时拥有更大的项目团队，尽管这些结果取决于所使用的事后成​​功评估。我们得出结论，对于企业家来说，使ICO尽可能透明非常重要，个人资料和专家评级是克服与代币销售相关的信息不对称问题的宝贵手段。