$100 Million: ICO Projects ‘Spent’ Over 500,000 ETH in the Last 30 Days

• Available blockchain data shows ICO projects have 'spent' over 500,000 ETH in the last 30 days.
• This would help explain why the cryptocurrency's price has been plummeting.

Projects that raised funds selling tokens on the Ethereum network have ‘spent’ over 500,000 ETH (nearly $100 million) in the last 30 days, blockchain data shows. This, coupled with large whale movements, could be behind the cryptocurrency’s recent price drop.

According to data from Santiment, which tracks the wallets of a number of initial coin offerings (ICOs), the project that spent the most ETH in the last 30 days was DigixDAO, as it spent nearly 210,000 ETH ($41.6 million) in said period. It still has 395,000 in its wallet.

The second project that spent the most was dice game Etheroll, as it moved over 89,000 ETH ($17.6 million) from its wallets. Cobinhood, a commission-free cryptocurrency exchange, stood in fourth place after moving 84,500 ETH ($16.8 million).

Various other projects moved well over 10,000 ETH in the last few days. Notably, data shows that the Ethereum spent over time on September 4 was of 250,000 ($49.8 million), shortly before the cryptocurrency’s price plummeted this week from over $280 to little under $200. It’s possible some of these funds were sent to cryptocurrency exchanges and were then dumped on the market

At press time, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap is trading at about $199.5 after falling 4.65% in the last 24-hour period, according to CryptoCompare data. In the past 30 days, the cryptocurrency lost over 38% of its value.

The drop, as CryptoGlobe reported, has been attributed to short seller pressure, as the number of shorts against the cryptocurrency recently hit an all-time high, and to ICO sell-offs coupled with scalability issues. As a result of these, investor confidence in ETH went down.

Along with these factors, the cryptocurrency’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently told Bloomberg that the explosive growth days are over for the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem. Per Buterin, crypto users should be encouraged to explore “real applications” and the “real economic activity” associated with the technology.

It’s worth noting that while Santiment’s data shows the ETH has been ‘spent’ it only means it has been moved. The website assumes moved ETH has been spent, although projects could have numerous reasons to move their funds.

While some projects are indeed likely cashing out their ether as the cryptocurrency’s price drops in an attempt to preserve some of their funds, others could merely be rearranging them. In the past Etheroll has addressed rumors it dumped funds, claiming it was “simply migrating funds to an updated smart-contract.”