Crypto-Presales Q2 Report : $100B+ Fundraising Trends, MiCA’s Impact & Sector-Wise Growth

The cryptocurrency market has experienced massive highs and new lows this year, a phenomenon that has driven investors to look for safer pastures. Thankfully, crypto presales, assets that are available to buy before they make an entry on an exchange, have gained more traction as of late.

Such projects give investors a way to get on the ground floor of a project and gain access to its native crypto at a discount. And as hype builds during the multi-stage event, and the token finally goes live, the same investors could generate massive gains in record time.

The rise of presale projects has made room for innovative projects to emerge. Some presales are seen as alternatives to existing options, while others are perceived as assets that could make the current ecosystem stronger. This article will give key insights into these early moving projects.

How Much Money is Coming into Token Sales?

Since 2025 has not yet ended, there is no clear statistic about how much money has come into presales this year. However, much can be learned from last year’s trajectory. According to CryptoRank, crypto fundraising via token sales reached $106.5 billion in 2024, representing a 53% growth from 2023.

CoinLaw, on the other hand, has given very ICO-specific data, stating that the global ICO market in 2025 could reach $10.5 billion, out of which Europe under MiCA will account for $4.8 billion, which is approximately 46% of the total.

Overall, early token offerings account for a single digit percentage of global venture capital. However, when it comes to the Web3 niche, they still remain a major option.

Where Presales are Happening Now?

Crypto presales are no longer beholden to a single format, but rather have multiple structured environments. Conventionally, launchpads and IDOs are preferred for the most early stage projects. And according to CryptoRank data, IDOs are being considered the best route for fundraising for an early stage project in 2025.

That said, 2025 has seen a positive shift, which is the change in the regulatory landscape causing regulated exchanges to enter early stage token access. For instance, Coinbase’s new public token-offering platform, also known as Token Sales, has been gaining momentum. While it does have a six-month restriction in place, it promises guaranteed listing. This shows that centralized exchanges are seeing the shift in the crypto market paradigm and are making their way into early token offerings.

Overall, while the standard presale through a website approach still holds in some instances, DEX launchpads and CEX-run platforms are also gaining more preference now.

Regulatory Intrusion: Europe’s MiCA Experiment and Its Impact on Presales

The surge in presale offerings on the market from 2023 to 2024 caused Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation to step in and design a legal framework to introduce more regulations. This time, crypto ICOs have received more rules. These involve legal clarity around the explanation of the types of crypto assets offered and detailed white papers highlighting investor protection.

It has also become mandatory to specify the risks associated with a particular asset, and developers of all ICOs are now required to provide audited financial statements to regulators.

Thanks to this, institutional participation in ICOs is around 42 to 45% of ICO investments, a massive jump from only 18 to 22% in 2023.

Overall, regulatory intrusion has turned presales from a wild west environment into a more regulated phenomenon capable of generating interest among institutional investors.

Types of Tokens Generating More Momentum as Presales in 2025

The intrusion of regulations, the need for innovation and the shifting priorities of customers have led some of the more unique tokens to gain traction lately. Here is a brief look into them.

AI Tokens

2024 saw the rise of AI agents, which caused the AI-agent crypto market cap to surge in a major way until the beginning of 2025. While the financial hype dissipated following the volatile state of the market, the narrative is still strong and paints AI crypto as one of the best options for investors.

Artificial intelligence has become a strong narrative anchor for assets in 2025. These aspects have seeped into multiple crypto presales, even meme coins that are focusing on a minimalistic approach to leverage AI to gain more attention.

RWA Tokens

RWA or Real World Asset tokenization has gone through a massive surge from $85 million in 2020 to $21 billion in 2025. A research report by CoinGecko even stated it could reach $50 billion by the end of 2025. This research holds some weight since a search for top RWA protocol tokens on CoinMarketCap reveals that at the present time, RWA assets have a collective market cap of over $45 billion.

As more assets of a similar niche enter the ecosystem, the capitalization can potentially exceed $50 billion.

Meme and Community Tokens

This niche has seen a surprising level of growth, all thanks to the rising volatile market conditions. Many new community-centric meme tokens have appeared on the market during 2025’s presales, focusing on the fun factor and not hiding away from their nature. Some of them are utility-centric as well.

Final Thoughts

Presales continue to generate momentum, and now that there are regulations emerging, the crypto fundraising space has started to change shape. The best niches of presales, however, focus on a combination of utility and memes, which is the main reason why AI, RWA and utility-centric meme coins that promise long-term upsides are getting traction.

2025 has proven that presales could be long-term fixtures in crypto, and the trend may continue in 2026.