Whitepaper Visualization and ICO Success

Research problem/question: Is the visualization of ICO whitepaper associated with ICO success?

Objective: The purpose of the paper is to find out how the visualization of the whitepaper affects the ICO and what key information is more important to be presented visually. The definition of visualization in this study is Pictures, Tables, Charts, Font Size and Color, etc.

Hypothesis Development: The first hypothesis is the visualization of the whitepaper does not affect the amount of capital raised. The second hypothesis is the effect in H1 is not affected by the use of media advertising.

Design/methodology/approach: This study uses a multiple regression model to test the hypothesis and thus observe which independent visual variables in the whitepaper impact the ICO funds raised.

Findings: First, when the number of media resources is 0 or 1, the ICO success is positively correlated with Pictures, Tables, changing the font color, the upper limit of the Amount Raised, and negatively associated with Font Size. Second, when the number of media resources exceeds 1, the ICO success is not related to the visualization degree of the whitepaper, but it is still positively associated with the setting of the upper limit of Amount Raised. Third, the current popular whitepaper style is to visualize essential information.

Sample: This study extracts 165 whitepapers from ICObench available for download during 2019-2020. There are 141 whitepapers in 2019 and 24 in 2020.

Contribution: The paper results provide insight on whether the visualization of whitepapers matter for investors, and if yes, what are these visualization characteristics. The findings of the paper may help the content of the ICO whitepaper to be more standardized, professional, and visualized. It may also help improve comparability and competitiveness among different ICO projects, thus promoting issuers' disclosure quality of internal information, facilitating investors' decision-making, and reducing market risk.