Crowdfunding market continue to grow rapidly in the last few years.
According to WordSpy.com, the earliest recorded use of the word "crowdfunding" was by Michael Sullivan in August 2006, but actually the first crowdfunding project is in 1984 and it is related to Statue of Liberty.
In 2013 Massolution released a report with some shocking data – crowdfunding market growth – 81% in 2012, total amount of money raised $2.7 billion wordwide. On the next year prediction the amount was nearly doubled - $5.1 billion.
https://www.crowdsourcing.org/editorial/the-world-reacts-to-massolutions-crowdfunding-industry-report/25192
Nowadays, almost every niche is covered by crowdfunding platform and during March 2014 one of the leaders – Kickstarter reported $1 billion in pledge over by 5.7 million people to creative projects.
https://www.kickstarter.com/1billion
Most likely these numbers made somebody angry and there are changes in law, even Paypal made changes in their TOS related to crowdfunding campaigns, however most of these changes are related to equity based crowdfunding, so startup dream is still alive for many. From another angle changes definitely need to be done to stop fraud and protect contributors.
Crowdfunding is not just about money!
True, crowdfunding main goal is to raise money and fulfill a dream. However there are many side benefits...