Huobi Research published a report in June that revealed “global investors are still optimistic toward the [cryptocurrency] market in the second half of 2018.” It showed 71.4 percent of Huobi’s survey respondents think that the market capitalization of the cryptocurrency ecosystem “will increase more than 30 percent.”
The company’s detailed report notes that funds raised in 2017 from crypto asset crowdfunding, or initial coin offerings (ICOs), were “23 times that of 2016.” Huobi’s report also mentions that 18.6 percent of surveyed crypto investors believe there will likely be a moderate increase of about 10-30 percent in cryptocurrency prices during the second half of 2018.
Meanwhile, about 10 percent of respondents said that there will either be a slight “slump” in the market capitalization of most cryptocurrencies or no significant change.
“More Capital To Center Around Quality Projects”
Overall, it appears that surveyed investors are optimistic about the performance of the crypto market in the coming months. This, despite the fact that “up to 67 percent of the new crypto assets” tracked by Huobi were “selling below issuance prices” in June.
There were notably a few exceptions, as pointed out in the report, with crypto projects like Bluzelle, Gifto, Nucleus Vision, Tomochain, and Zilliqa that performed relatively well despite the bearish trend the crypto ecosystem has been enduring.
Huobi’s 18H1 (first half, 2018) market report further notes that moving forward it’s expecting “more capital to center around quality projects.” It also points out that “the first DAICO was successfully completed in 18H1.” A DAICO is a suggested improvement by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on the widely-used ICO crowdfunding method.
The DAICO model incorporates some features of Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). For instance, it allows a crypto project’s token holders to obtain a refund through an automated voting system, if they are not satisfied with how the project is going.
A More Balanced Cryptocurrency Market
Taking into consideration the various developments in the cryptocurrency market, Huobi’s research report states that there will be six “rationales” moving forward. The first being that “crypto finance will penetrate traditional finance.” There are already signs of this happening, such as the traditional Swiss Stock Exchange creating its own regulated cryptocurrency exchange.
Other stated rationales include developing more real-world use cases for cryptocurrencies, “the [imminent] acquisition of high-quality internet applications through crypto assets”, and the expected rise in blockchain adoption leading to increased “[crypto] market activity.”
Additionally, the report predicts that “the average age of [bitcoin] users [currently between 25-44] will move up” and “more females are expected to enter the market.”
