Initial coin offerings (ICOs) have recently emerged as a new financing instrument for entrepreneurial ventures, spurring economic and academic interest. Nevertheless, the impact of exogenous and endogenous signals on the performance of ICOs as well as the effects of the cryptocurrency hype and subsequent downfall of Bitcoin between 2016 and 2019 remain underexplored. We applied ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions based on a dataset containing 1597 ICOs that covers almost 2.5 years. The results show that exogenous and endogenous signals have a significant effect on the funds raised in ICOs. We also find that the Bitcoin price heavily drives the performance of ICOs. However, this hype effect is moderated, as high-quality ICOs are not pegged to these price developments. Revealing the interplay between hypes and signals in the ICO’s asset class should broaden the discussion of this emerging digital phenomenon.

最初的代币发行（ICO）最近成为一种针对创业企业的新型融资工具，激发了人们的经济和学术兴趣。尽管如此，外源性和内源性信号对ICO性能的影响以及加密货币炒作的影响以及随后的2016年至2019年比特币的下跌仍未得到充分研究。我们基于包含覆盖近2.5年的1597个ICO的数据集应用了普通最小二乘（OLS）回归。结果表明，外源性和内源性信号对ICO中筹集的资金有重大影响。我们还发现，比特币价格在很大程度上推动了ICO的性能。但是，由于高质量的ICO与这些价格发展不挂钩，因此这种炒作效果有所缓和。