Speculation is an integral part of the cryptocurrency industry. This becomes even more apparent when there is a lot of bearish pressure on the market.One has to wonder why these sell-offs keep happening so regularly. The ICO industry may have a role to play in this regard, albeit nothing can be proven right away.
Are ICOs Crashing Cryptocurrency?There is an interesting correlation between the ICO industry and cryptocurrency market movements. Most projects raise funds in Ethereum to sell their tokens to investors all over the world. As such, these companies hold a lot of funds in Ethereum and other currencies. However, these companies do not hold on to their ETH holdings by any means.
In fact, a recent post claims how a previous major Ethereum price dip occurred due to EOS. This hyped-up alternative currency and blockchain project raised money during a year-long crowdsale. As such, they raised quite a substantial amount of money in the process. To cover the ongoing operational costs, amounts of Ethereum have been converted to fiat currency. That is only normal, as all ICO projects go through the same motions in this regard.
What is rather unusual is how 300,000 ETH was sold prior to getting EOS listed on Binance. Exchanging such vast amounts of money in the span of 60 minutes is very unusual. While there is no official evidence as to who is behind this development, a lot of fingers are pointed at EOS. That in itself is not entirely surprising, as the company had been spending a lot of Ether in the past few days.
Speculation but no EvidenceAlthough the EOS incident has some evidence, it is all a bit circumstantial at best. There are a lot of other reasons as to why such massive cryptocurrency sell-offs are taking place right now. Manipulation is always an obvious concern, especially in this unregulated industry. Proving that type of nefarious action, is as difficult as confirming whether or not ICOs are selling off their holdings in steep amounts.
The blockchain is an interesting tool in this regard. In the case of Bitcoin and Ethereum, all transactions are public and broadcasted in real-time. As such, spotting any major funds moving to and from exchanges is not difficult. At the same time, a big transfer doesn’t mean there will be manipulation or other nefarious activity taking place. Some people and entities have bigger holdings and can easily push the market in any direction. It is an unfortunate truth cryptocurrency users have to live with at all times.
For the time being, it does not appear ICOs are liquidating their holdings. It is not impossible some companies are purposefully selling certain amounts so at this time, since they need operational cash first and foremost. With so many ICOs raising millions of dollars, it is not unlikely some of their conversions may come together at the same time and trigger some market pressure. Nefarious activity will remain incredibly difficult to prove, for rather obvious reasons.
