Topic: ICOs Hold a Billion Dollars Worth of Eth (Read 115 times)

So this looks like the closest possible reason for ethereum dump. Hopefully, those big holders will delay selling some of their bags.

Projects that have raised funds in Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) currently hold 3,330,390 eth, with ◊16,400 of it, worth $4.5 million, sold last week.

Data from Santiment shows Digix is the biggest ICO-ed eth holder after the Ethereum Foundation, with some ◊470,000, worth $130 million. More than its token’s total market cap.

Golem comes in second position with 369,00 eth, worth about $100 million, just under its current market cap of $140 million.

Topping the big three is Status at ◊253,000, or $70 million. The market cap for them is nearly double, at $130 million.

Aragon, a platform where you can run decentralized organization, has more than twice its current market cap of $28 million in 238,000 eth holdings worth $64 million.

While SingularDTV is doing far better in eth holdings than in its token market cap of $13 million, with 225,000 eth giving them $61 million.


In combination, more than three million eth is being held by ICOs with the Ethereum Foundation holding another ◊660,000, or about $200 million.

That’s based on about 125 projects which hold more than zero eth, with Santiment tracking in total some 650 projects.

The vast majority no longer have any eth, presumably because they have sold them, including OmiseGo, which raised more than ◊71,000 last year but now seemingly has zero.

They do hold about $100 million worth of OMG tokens with some of this data potentially being incomplete as they are curated by individuals.

Santiment has called on projects to reach out if they see any incorrect information, with our attempt to confirm with OMG whether they have indeed sold out all their eth unsuccessful.

Yet, they are selling. Some ◊16,500 in the past seven days and ◊136,000 in the past 30 days or $37 million at current prices.

That’s based on eth movements out of “official” ICO’s accounts, which might sometimes move eth for other reasons than selling, but D2 Capital, which provides crypto funds management, estimates 70% of the eth moved by ICOs goes to exchanges.


The sale of eth by ICOs has slowed down compared to EOS’ relentless liquidation of eth earlier this year, sometimes by market selling on exchanges.

But eth to fiat conversion by ICOs continues pretty much daily albeit at far lower levels than during the peak in May.


Interestingly, long time eth holders are selling too. Far less than during the peak in February or even during the beginning of 2017, but it looks like there has been a slight uptick recently.

It appears many cashed out in early 2016 when eth’s price was at $5 or so, and plenty sold at the beginning of 2017 during eth’s rise from $20 to $420, with a large liquidation following during the peak at the beginning of this year.

That added sell pressure clearly affected the price with genesis holders keeping a lid on speed, but one picture we are missing here is miner’s eth liquidations.

Data for that isn’t tracked by Santiment, although it shouldn’t be more difficult than for ICOs or genesis addresses except that mining pools tend to distribute to miners all the time, with what miners then do being a lot more difficult to discern.

Yet clearly there is plenty of sell pressure here, but such sell pressure was higher previously and still price went vertical, with demand being the other side of the equation and that has been growing.