Is This Ethereum ICO Project To Blame For ETH’s Price Slump?

The Ethereum value has fallen by round -25% since its mid-March peak at round $4,100 and is presently buying and selling simply above $3,000. Whereas this loss is consistent with the broader market pattern and specifically Bitcoin’s value drop of about -22% in the identical time, there could possibly be one more reason for ETH’s value droop, which appears believable because the German authorities solely sells BTC and never ETH, and Mt. Gox doesn’t personal any ETH both. However what if Ethereum has its very personal “Mt. Gox“?

Is The Ethereum Worth Suppressed By Golem?

Chinese language crypto journalist Colin Wu (@WuBlockchain) first reported by way of X on the numerous actions of ETH funds by the Golem undertaking, an Ethereum-based undertaking that performed a notable Preliminary Coin Providing (ICO) in 2016. In accordance with Wu, “Golem, a undertaking that raised 820,000 ETH in ICO in 2016, has transferred 36,000 ETH to Binance, Coinbase, Bitfinex, and so on. prior to now 37 days, price about $115 million.”

On-chain evaluation service Lookonchain additional revealed the extent of those transactions by way of X: “Golem has offered 24,400 ETH ($72M) on Binance, Coinbase and Bitfinex prior to now 3 days, and presently holds 127,634 ETH ($372M). Golem raised 820,000 ETH by means of ICO in November 2016, when the value of ETH was solely $10.2.”

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The Golem ICO was an early and vital occasion for the crypto trade which occurred in November 2016. Golem aimed to create a decentralized supercomputer by harnessing the mixed computing energy of customers’ machines, from private laptops to whole knowledge facilities. The concept was to permit customers to hire out their computing sources to others.

In its ICO, Golem raised roughly 820,000 ETH, which was valued at round $8 million on the time, in simply 29 minutes, turning into an emblem of the ICO bubble. This funding was supposed for use to develop the Golem community. Regardless of its bold objectives, Golem’s market relevance has considerably diminished, with its token now buying and selling at simply $0.32 (#151 by market cap), a stark decline from its peak value of $1.32 in January 2018.

Harsh Criticism From Crypto Consultants

Criticism has been vocal amongst trade leaders. Adam Cochran, a companion at CEHV, expressed his displeasure by way of X: “Absolute bastards. Sat on their ETH for ages doing nothing. And right here we’re within the period of demand for distributed compute they usually can’t even be related.”

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Equally, Jimmy Ragosa, an advisor at Sismo, sarcastically remarked, “Sure, Golem has been dumping on us. However, no less than, they’re utilizing these 100s of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to construct important scaling infra and broadly adopted apps, proper?”

One other perspective got here from @based16z on X, who speculated on the rationale behind Golem’s actions, “Say what you need about Golem, however they’re not precisely a gambler. For them to dump 700 million {dollars} in ETH after 7 years, I assume they know one thing.”

How sturdy the affect of Golem gross sales is on the ETH value stays pure hypothesis. Nevertheless, it appears clear that the fixed promoting stress has most likely performed no less than a sure function within the Ethereum value droop. At press time, ETH traded at $3,049.

Featured picture from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com