The recent market sell-off that saw bitcoin go under the $4,000 mark for the first time since September of 2017, has seen initial coin offering (ICO) projects withdraw over 170,000 ETH, currently worth about $19.3 million, from their treasuries.
According to a report published by blockchain research firm Diar, over 100,000 ETH ($11.4 million) were transferred from ICO projects’ treasuries in the past week. Only in September and January of this year have these treasuries been accessed so much, the report claims.
The report, first spotted by The Next Web, comes shortly after most cryptocurrencies saw their prices plummet earlier this year. Ethereum’s ether went from around $200 to a low of about $102 before it started to recover. At press time, it’s trading at $114.1 after rising 9.6% in the last 24-hour period.
Notably, when ETH fell from about $350 to $200 earlier this year, Santiment data revealed ICO projects had “spent” over 500,000 ETH at the time. While it’s clear that amount could’ve helped the cryptocurrency’s price plummet, it’s only clear the funds moved from their treasuries.
As The Next Web points out, the cryptocurrency sell-off has also seen trading volumes drop. Top cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance and OKEx, have been trading significantly lower amounts of crypto than they were in January, when the bearish trend was still fresh.
Diar’s report further notes that out of the tokens that were launched this year and added to cryptocurrency exchanges, 75% have been seeing their volumes in “complete decline” since last month. Nevertheless, the teams behind these projects have, to date, withdrawn only 22% of their total funds.
Before the market started plummeting and projects started selling their funds, the total amount raised was of 4.65 million ETH, at the time worth $1.7 billion. Notably, as CryptoGlobe reported, funds raised by ICO projects have been dropping, and were down 80% in the third quarter of this year.
Despite these stats, BitMEX’s research has last month revealed ICOs sold “almost all” of the ETH they raised before the market hit what appears to be its bottom. This means that these were “sitting on unrealized gains, rather than losses.”
