What will 2018 bring for the blockchain and its principal sources of funding? : A Russian hedge fund manager told me Tuesday that he thinks the whole initial coin offering (ICO) phenom that made hundreds of tech nerds millionaires yet again...is over in 2018. They are "on their way out", he said. ICOs were all the rage this year as start-ups avoided the traditional venture capital route and went straight to the cryptocurrency market and crowdfunded their projects, often by issuing their own digital tokens available on cryptocurrency trading platforms.