Having belatedly realized that the crypto market may have further to drop, and that staying all in ETH could be fatal, tokenized projects have begun cashing out and cutting costs. Some, such as Aragon, have shown prudence in their treasury management, maximizing capital through smart cryptocurrency acquisition and liquidation. This week, the project sold $1.5 million of cryptocurrency, including $1 million of ETH, and has sought sanctuary from market volatility by taking out a 1 million loan of DAI, Maker’s ETH-collateralized stablecoin.
Other tokenized projects have not been so fortunate or astute at balancing their budgets however. In addition to Aragon, over 100,000 in ETH has been sold by ICOs in the past week in a belated attempt to stem diminishing funds. A number of projects have also begun to lay off staff, including Steemit, which is shedding 70 percent of its workforce. In a blog post, Steemit CEO Ned Scott attributed the move to “the weakness of the cryptocurrency market, the fiat returns on our automated selling of STEEM diminishing, and the growing costs of running full Steem nodes.” He added:
I would like to thank all of our employees and contractors for their months and years of dedication and hard work. It is incredibly difficult to part with these great people who I have gotten to know well and respect.