Over the past few months, Ethereum investors have had to cope with bears from everywhere thanks to the pessimistic news and sporadic or wavering statements that have grown rather rampant within the period of its existence. While a lot of work has been put into the Ethereum project, the digital currency otherwise known as ETH has managed to plunge so deeply to a new all-time low of about $183 – this is the first time that the cryptocurrency market is seeing a bloodbath that has caused a plummet of close $198 billion.
There was a boom in the number of Initial Coin Offerings in towards the end of the 2017 and early this year, something that drew the attention of a number of different market players including mainstream media. Ethereum happened to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this rapid increase in the number of Initial Coin Offerings. In fact, the digital currency remains to be the second biggest cryptocurrency market and its smart contract has spawned several projects including Tron and EOS.
Unfortunately, this year has not been Ethereum’s best year having gone through a constant drop this year. This drop in Ethereum’s value has been one of the most shocking outcomes in the cryptocurrency industry and the ICOs are reportedly to blame for the digital currency’s downward price trend.
“The blockchain space is getting to the point where there’s a ceiling in sight. If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1,000-times growth in anything in the space anymore,” Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum commented on ETH’s decline.
This is certainly not good news for speculators and crypto enthusiasts who purchased digital currencies at high prices at the beginning of the year with the hopes of stopping glosses from the year-long slump. As such, it is very important for stakeholders to have practical anticipations for possible gains especially considering last December’s astounding flare-up in crypto prices that was described as a “retail bubble” by many investors.
Why Fingers Are Pointing to the ICOs
Ethereum-based ICOs have spent 157,700 ETH over the past 8 days – this is equivalent to $29.9 million at the digital currency’s present value and is the highest amount spent since March. Due to this, there has been speculation that the cryptocurrency startups have been offloading Ethereum for fiat currency on major exchanges.
Alex Kruger, a cryptocurrency analyst, says that about 4 percent of the Ethereum held in visible ICO wallets was transferred out last month. Kevin Rooke, another cryptocurrency analyst, also pointed out that the Ethereum reserves held by ICOs fell to $600 million in the last week. This ICO cash-out is one of the causes of ether’s 40 percent price drop over the past month.
