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Re:Cloudflare's Ethereum Gateway by nostrademons on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @12:48PM (#20224922)
There's currently a big drag on Ethereum prices from the legacy of the ICO boom. During the boom, it acted like a double-pyramid-scheme: the only way to invest in ICOs was to buy Ethereum first, which made the price of ETH skyrocket, which meant for eye-popping dollar values raised by ICOs (denominated in ETH, not dollars, so the top-line had to be multiplied by the ETH price), which attracted new investors into the market, which raised the price even more, which meant that early ETH investors were sitting on large paper gains, which made them even more willing to open their money and fund ICOs, and so on.

When the bubble burst, this pyramid scheme works in reverse. Many ICO companies were holding the bulk of their assets in ETH. To convert that to dollars to fund operations, they all need to sell, and they're all fighting over the same shrunken pool of incoming ETH/USD dollars. So as more of them sell, the price dropped, which forced even more to sell, and so on.

IMHO the worst was actually the capitulation last December, which saw ETH go down to $85 from a high of $1200. (Possibly not coincidentally, this capitulation started right around when the $40M raised by a typical ICO declined in value to the roughly $5-7M that's a typical Series A.) But until ICO companies go bankrupt or start shipping useful products, they'll be a continual drag as they liquidate ETH to pay salaries.

Re:Cloudflare's Ethereum Gateway by derefr on Tuesday June 25, 2019 @01:07PM (#20276394)
> During the boom, it acted like a double-pyramid-scheme: the only way to invest in ICOs was to buy Ethereum first

One could compare this to a situation where there is a global economy but a given type of asset or financial instrument only exists in one exchange in one country. Presumably the exchange rate of that country's currency will rise as people buy into its currency to use in investing in that new instrument/asset class.

Re:Cloudflare's Ethereum Gateway by madhancr on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @05:30PM (#20227559)
ICO selling is mostly over - https://diar.co/ethereum-ico-treasury-balances/

It does not affect the price anymore compared to daily trading volumes

Re:Cloudflare's Ethereum Gateway by nostrademons on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @06:11PM (#20227873)
The zero-point on that graph is 2.5M ETH. It's certainly down significantly from last year, particularly when measured in dollar terms, but in terms of ETH wallets it's just about half. Withdrawals on the site you cited are at about 2/3 of their 2018 averages.