Ending Ethereum FUD Over Tezos ICO Treasury Transfers

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As the price of ETH continues to nosedive, losing
almost 50% of its value over the past 30 days, several
altcoin projects have proceeded to move Ethereum
holdings out of their fundraiser ICO wallets. Two of the
projects, Tezos and Aragon, have provided stated
purposes for the transfers which, they say, does not
include selling or dumping any Ethereum holdings.
Tezos Foundation Moves 82,050 ETH

When Tezos (XTZ) launched a fundraiser in July of
2017, it collected 361,122 ETH along with a mass of
65,703 Bitcoin. Not all of the ETH went to the same
wallet since Bitcoin Suisse, a Swiss cryptocurrency
bank also accepted and stored ETH contributions for
the project.

In a response to an email from Crypto Insider,
Anthony Lacavaro, a spokesman for the Tezos
Foundation, indicated that the movement of ETH was
merely for relocation purposes only.
“The ETH were moved into a different storage system,
not sold,” according to Lacavaro.
As of January 2018, the Tezos treasury wallet
contained 203,468 ETH, according to Diar .

That number, since January, has remained steady until
November when in recent days over 82,000 ETH was
moved from the treasury account.
Diar reported the update via Twitter on Thursday
morning:

"Our live #Ethereum ICO Treasury Balances is
back up.
A 82K $ETH withdrawal from @tezos now
marks November as the largest drawdown
period this year."

The move originally sparked alarm among crypto
watchers concerned whether the 80,000 ETH would be
dumped on the open market, further driving down an
already sagging Ethereum price.

Other Projects Follow Suit
According to Diar’s data, Tezos is not alone this month
in moving Ethereum funds out of treasury wallets.
Aragon (ANT), a dApp built on Ethereum designed to let
users create and manage a decentralized organization,
which launched an ICO in May of 2017, is another large
ETH holder with approximately 263,523 in its treasury
at the start of January 2018.

The most recent numbers show Aragon will end
November holding just 182,388 ETH, a difference of
over 50,000 moved from their treasury since January,
the vast majority of which moved in the last 30 days.

According to reports, Aragon has been working to
secure their funding and hedge against volatility by
securing assets with a loan based on the Ethereum-
collateralised Dai stable coin.
Aragon confirmed the reporting on Twitter and said
their official position remains “long” on Ethereum:

"When the Aragon token sale
happened, we raised $25m and
ETH was at $90. Fortunately, the
Aragon Association has made
good bets in other
cryptocurrencies, and even after
a year and a half of operations,
the Aragon Association now has
a portfolio worth more than
$30m."

Smaller blockchain projects, such as Aragon, will need
to be more conservative during downward trends to
protect large crypto holdings which can quickly be
eaten by day-to-day costs as values plummet.
District0x (DNT), another Ethereum-based dApp ICO
from 2017, also moved over 15,000 ETH in the past
month.

Crypto Insider contacted District0x for comment but
did not receive a response by press time.

ICO Treasuries Not Causing ETH Fall

Despite many ICO treasuries holding significant
amounts of ETH, the analysis shows that these
accounts amount to roughly 4% of all Ethereum
worldwide holdings. Many ICOs from 2017, aside from
Tezos, are built on tokens which rely on Ethereum
contracts so it would be counterintuitive for those
same projects to carelessly dump their holdings which
could potentially drag down the ETH price and hurt
their own market cap.

The main cause for the Ethereum downturn, other than
following Bitcoin, is more likely related to the SEC
ruling in mid-November which saw two ICOs agree to
fines and refunds which has further exacerbated a
bearish environment where projects are looking to
protect their assets and weather this storm.

According to the numbers from DappCapitulation, most
ICO treasuries have not budged in the past 12 months
which means most projects are still holding their ETH
untouched. If we start to see the moves multiply in the
coming weeks, it could signal that more ICO projects
are feeling the crunch or looking toward protective
measures.

Source : https://cryptoinsider.com