This research work's topic is "Tools of Managerial Decision-Making while Investing in Blockchain Projects", where investments into blockchain projects were analyzed from a managerial point of view. The whole crypto projects` market was reviewed. Such aspects as crypto-market specifics, analysis of the ICO market and its statistics, as well as developing tools of analysis and decision making were considered. Special attention was given to the ICO and post-ICO stages of investing. This research paper strives to develop tools of decision making, using a deep understanding of the area based on gathered statistic, interviews with crypto-market professionals and personal working experience in the industry. The universal parameters for every project were handpicked, systematized and described, so were the correlations between them. The "R" software was used to conduct the statistical analysis. Based on the research task, in the bachelor's thesis, such moments as a history of new blockchain industry, the main principles of its functioning, and important investing aspects were consistently considered. This research work can be used in the future by the investors as a guide for the industry. Furthermore, the data gathered by our team is valuable for further investigations and may lead to the emergence of more complicated analytics.

Keywords: Blockchain, ICO, Investments, Cryptocurrency

The development of a digital economy based on the blockchain technology has become a leading global trend. Blockchain or distributed ledger technology may be called just one of the new concepts in the current digital era. Despite different market conditions on the cryptocurrencies market, the technology on which their existence is built has not lost its relevance, but on the contrary, is accelerating rapidly. It can be observed how news headlines regularly mention events in this area. More and more companies announce their intentions for implementation of blockchain based tools within their businesses. A huge increase in industrial and academic interest regarding blockchain is evident. It has serious advantages not only for businesses but for the world as a whole.

It has already become a tendency to think that blockchain technology can only be used in the financial sphere - with its help people can get rid of the many disadvantages of the traditional banking system. These include a large chain of intermediaries, high commissions for transactions, lack of anonymity. It is not entirely true. All activities related to the storage and transmission of data, as well as the area where a person has traditionally been a guarantee of trust and certification can be changed a lot. Experts believe that in the coming years, blockchain will firmly take its rightful place in jurisprudence, notarial services, copyright, venture investment, medicine, archives, the electoral process, social networks and even in the development of the infrastructure of the internet itself. And these are not just beautiful words, many public people have already spoken about the blockchain, including German Gref (head of Sberbank and former Minister of Economic Development of Russia). He expressed confidence that blockchain systems could revolutionize all branches of human life. In one of the public speeches, he called for the replacement of Sberbank's expensive information system in the near future since it was outdated and did not meet the requirements of the future. In the same vein, the head of the Ministry of Communications and Communications, Nikolay Nikiforov, expresses his statements. He assured citizens that the necessary research has already been done and urged everyone to focus not on today, but on 5-10 years ahead. The fact that the giant banks (JP Morgan, Barclays, etc.) are engaged in the study of this cryptocurrency speaks in favor of blockchain-systems. Especially for this, they even joined a consortium called "R3" to fully explore the possibilities of blockchain. In addition to economic efficiency, the safety factor is also important. Since its inception, the "Bitcoin" virtual system has been subjected to numerous attacks and hacking attempts. All these attempts were unsuccessful, which is another argument in favor of the blockchain. At the same time, it can be concluded that in addition to the banking sector, this technology may be applicable in various fields of life, including the governmental levels. As partly described above, Big corporations such as Microsoft, Intel, IBM are preparing for blockchain mass adoption. They are working intensely on blockchain-based applications, making this one of the most promising drivers of financial innovation. Our research team is going to reveal all the possible risks while investing in blockchain-based projects from the point of an ordinary investor, not a fund or institution. All the crucial differences between stages of investments (pre-sale, ICO, post-ICO) will be considered to distinguish the investment phases. We believe that while blockchain technology is still in infancy stage it is vital for people to be careful enough not to lose large sums of money. Generally, the study is about the tools of managerial decision-making while investing in blockchain projects. (Dorofeev, Maidanov, Snopov, 2019) cryptocurrency market decision

In traditional sphere laws and mechanism have already been developed. There are a lot of studies and the sphere mostly works with common scenarios. The blockchain sphere is a new field to develop, laws are different. At the moment there is already a large number of scientific papers. However, for the most part, they are devoted to the descriptive mechanisms and principles of the technology. This is only the initial stage of the mass adaptation for this new technology; society is gradually exploring how the blockchain works. For the most part, people`s mind is not able to understand technical information. Understanding the blockchain is difficult because this technology lacks adaptive reflection for ordinary users, it is not available to them. If to go back to the existing scientific works, their authors mostly try to clarify key concepts. In addition, many papers are devoted to potential areas of application of technology, as well as key industries. The scientific world is faced with the task of popularizing the theory in order to maintain interest not only to in-depth users. This will allow attracting new specialists to work in this area. At the same time, a situation arises when emerging enthusiasm among young specialists comes to a standstill due to the lack of necessary information for practical interaction as regards to the blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Our work is aimed at such category of people to show them how to invest while being in the blockchain-related sphere, not to lose capital and not be afraid to learn new technologies. This is what blockchain lacks for the current day. Most investors fear to contact with cryptocurrencies due to a lack of understanding of the market mechanisms, as well as an unstable situation regarding the exchange rate of these currencies. In fact, it is a large and currently underrated market that has great potential in the future due to the cutting edge blockchain technology on which most cryptocurrencies are built.

It can be said that new technologies always attract many people for different reasons. Someone became real fans of particular industries; someone just wants to gain money from the new promising sphere. Ideally, if there is an intention to gain money by investments in any markets, people have to spend a lot of time studying new industry. This is exactly what may bring some additional relief to act rationally. However, every new promising sphere influence on people's behavior making them sometimes too self-confident and therefore risky. In most of the cases, all the promising industries that have been emerged are needed time to become stable. In the infancy stage risks are higher and the chances to lose a lot are higher accordingly. Therefore, if you are a competent skillful investor you can possibly pretend to profit from someone`s losses. Currently, a lot of existing researches regarding blockchain are connected with understanding this technology and are not focused on the investors` safety. In such investigations, it is easy to see warnings regarding risks of investments into cryptocurrencies however nothing concrete is described of how to prevent these risks. Our research team sees it as a wide research gap that is needed to be solved. (Dorofeev, Maidanov, Snopov, 2019) We will study existing risk avoiding methods, strategies and its practical usability based on investors response, recent cases and theoretical review. The purpose type of our research is exploratory. The objective is to study what are the main factors considering investments in blockchain startups and to make a guide that will help to avoid losses while manager works with blockchain. Our main sources of data gathering are in-depth interviews with crypto-related enthusiasts on the blockchain conferences. Following the objective of our study, it is necessary to provide the research question: Which aspects should be considered while investing in blockchain projects? This study will check the following hypotheses:

a) Short-term strategies are more effective for ICO investments rather than long-term ones;

b) Investments in projects which were already chosen by funds are profitable for ordinary investors;

c) "Blockchains" and "Blockchain service" categories of ICOs (infrastructure ones) are more preferable for investments related to other categories;

d) The presence of "High public bonus" is better for the profitability of blockchain project;

e) The degree of hype around a blockchain project positively affects its profitability for investors;

f) There are certain indicators of ICO which negatively influence on projects` profitability.

We define the following list of tasks to achieve the stated objective:

- To study recent literature about blockchain technology, investments in blockchain;

- To observe the existing investment strategies;

- To conduct the practical part and reveal current strategies from real investors;

- To formulate the most effective strategies for a particular case;

- To compare theoretical background and practical results;

- According to previous steps, create the blockchain investment guide.

Let us consider the tasks in more detail. In the initial stages, it is important to make a full review of the existing literature. Based on the latest scientific works, it is possible to trace the important stages of technology development, as well as to see the current picture more clearly. This is important for both the research team and subsequent readers. For the best assimilation of the presented material the theoretical base of research will be presented in the section "Theoretical foundation". The second task is to systematize the accumulated knowledge, i.e. to identify existing strategies for investment. Since investments in blockchain projects, in general, are essentially similar to investments in other projects, we expect that the existing strategies of investors will find their application in this area. It can be assumed that significant differences will be observed in the frequency of use of these strategies. This means that frequently used strategies from the traditional investment sphere may not find such frequent application in the blockchain. To confirm or refute this information, the following task is directed. After the practical part, the strategies used by existing investors of blockchain projects will be identified. Also, these strategies will be evaluated in terms of the frequency of distribution among investors and the effectiveness of such in general. Based on existing data and the new (received as a result of practical study) we provide a comparison of the financial strategies. The fifth task is to systematize and identify the most effective strategies, taking into account all available data. These aspects are discussed in more detail in the practical part of the study. The final task is the preparation of a full guide for investors, which describes in detail the process of choosing an investment strategy and evaluating a potential blockchain project based on the theoretical side and the practice of other investors.

Since blockchain projects as a whole differ in the level of risk from the general majority, it is admissible that the methods of risk assessment may differ from the traditionally accepted ones. In case of methods, they are also connected with the chosen strategy and features of blockchain theme. To follow the logic of study, we have analyzed previous observations, surveys, interviews, and documents to formulate our own hypothesizes and to describe the chosen topic. The mixed method was used to reveal both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the topic. This significantly helped the research team not only to calculate results but also understand and describe the actual state of affairs on the blockchain market. Practical participation was also a necessary part of the work. We have visited the authoritative blockchain conference and asked individual investors regarding their personal investing strategies. The questionnaire covered aspects such as factors of decision making; risk-calculation methods; profits and losses; other needed information. Above all, our work was aimed to be actual and modern to demonstrate real existing situation on blockchain sphere. The study is useful for the whole sphere because it will help interested people to better understand blockchain technology and investments into blockchain-related instruments. The better specialists fulfill this field, the more professional and stable it will be. Structurally, the work is divided into N parts. The first part is an introduction to the topic, an explanation of basic concepts, a brief description of the study. Despite the young nature of the chosen topic, an analysis of current literature and scientific works (that have already appeared) are included. 10-year duration is not mature at all, but there are plenty of scientific works which are examined by the research team in the "theoretical foundation" part. As already mentioned, these scientific works, for the most part, devote people to the mechanisms of the blockchain, as well as related concepts. These include cryptocurrency, ICO, mining, smart contracts, etc. Sources are assembled to most accurately describe the current status of this field. Over the past year, there were many events that have significantly changed the whole industry of blockchain. As for cryptocurrencies, there was both an increase of public interest in them and decrease which have always been accompanied by good or bad market conditions. A big fall of the cryptocurrency market is confirmed by disappointing statistics on the prices of all the cryptocurrencies on the exchanges. After impressive growth in the last quarter of the year 2017, there was a significant decline in prices for almost all cryptocurrencies, including all major ones. "Bitcoin", "Ethereum", "Ripple" - they all lost in price several times. The next Chapter is devoted to the Statement of the research question. It describes in more details the question of the study, the tasks that were set for the researchers. It also provides an explanation of the research methods and detailed specification of the hypotheses. The following part is a more specified description of the selected research methods, an introduction to the terminology of the research, and expected results. This Chapter describes the research methodology. During the study, we used several complicated methods like in-depth interviews, statistical analysis and linear regression model. Next technical part describes the research process. This includes the preparation of the necessary list of questions, as well as the description of data collection and subsequent analysis. This part also provides a full description of the results of practical activities. In addition to the data itself, there is an interpretation and discussion of the analysis from the research tea. The results of the analysis are described graphically using diagrams and graphs, as well as in the written form. The linear regression model is presented as a table. The last part includes a summary of the work, a comparison of theoretical expectations and practical compliance to it. In conclusion, the research team provides comments on the work done as a whole. This part includes a summary as well as a description of the areas of the work that should be addressed in future studies. The plans of the research team are also presented in this part.

Chapter 2. Theoretical foundation