Strategy&, PwC’s strategy and consulting division, in collaboration with the Crypto Valley Association (CVA), has launched the June 2018 edition of their quarterly reports on the global Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market.

The report, the second in its series, provides a comprehensive overview of ICO activity globally and examines how ICOs are disrupting the world of traditional finance. It looks into the key changes in this space since 2017 and provides insight into regulatory developments in key blockchain hubs such as Switzerland, the United States, and Singapore.

According to the report, while Switzerland, the U.S., and Singapore continue to be leading centers for ICO activity, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong have emerged as increasingly significant actors within the nascent global market in 2018. Smaller jurisdictions including Liechtenstein, Gibraltar and Malta are also following in the footsteps of Switzerland to position themselves as ICO-friendly hubs.

The report identifies three distinctive approaches which can be used to characterize the majority of emerging regulatory frameworks surrounding ICOs globally: ‘securities-driven’, ‘balanced’, and ‘binary’, most clearly observed in North America, Europe, and Asia, respectively.

ICOs are rapidly gaining traction globally – a total of 537 ICO’s with a volume of $13.7 billion have been closed successfully in the first 5 months of 2018 – which is more than all pre-2018 ICOs combined. Also, first true ICO unicorns have now appeared on the scene with several large scale ICOs – Telegram ($1.7 billionn) and EOS ($4.1 billion) – dwarfing previous records from 2017.

“After all the hype of 2017, this year has seen the ICO sector becoming more mature and established, with an improved focus on best business and legal practice, investor relations and fundraising. Hybrid models of combined Venture Capital and ICO financing are increasingly bringing together the best of what both have to offer, so that the soundness of a business is validated while it realises its market potential by receiving crowd support,” Daniel Diemers, Fintech Leader Switzerland, Head of Blockchain EMEA at PwC Strategy&, said in a statement.