Cointelegraph reports that 160,000 Ethereum were sold over the past ten days by ICOs. https://cointelegraph.com/news/trustnodes-icos-sold-160-000-ethereum-over-the-past-10-days/amp

Panic about the drop in price of Ethereum and the whloe crypto space, caused most projects to sell of their acquired funds and switch to the more stable fiat, this also deepens the drop in price.
Hopefully with the rise over the past 24 hours, more investors and projects would be encouraged to hold.

An ICO (initial coin offering) is an event by which a token/coin is distributed to the public bybthe developers.
It is divided into different stages, each with it's different specifications and clauses.
The project developers holds the rights to skip or omit any of the stages.

All the different stages can sometimes be confusing to investors, or anyone connected to the ICO, so let's walk through the stages of an ICO.
An ICO is usually divided into three parts;

1) Private sale
2) Pre sale
3) Public sale

- Private sale: The private sale is usually reserved for big investors.
The minimum investment in this stage is higher than all the other stages. And the bonuses per investment is also significantly higher than other stages.

During the private sale the project reaches out to potential investors (or group of investors), who are interested in the goals and targets of the project. As the project at this stage is still at the development stage, so the investors are basically investing in an idea.

- Pre sale: This could be private pre sale, or public pre sale, and hence it's could come before the private sale or public sale.
In essence, the pre sale ushers in the next stage of the ICO. It allows the project developers to decide how to best handle the sale, in terms of duration and bonuses.
The pre sale also has more bonuses than the suceeding stage. And the minimum investment is also higher.

- Public sale: This is also called crowd sale, as it is open to the entire public, this stage usually has the most publicity and the lowest bonuses.
It also has the lowest minimum investment option.

The project developers can choose to stretch any of this stages or omit any depending on the outcome of the TGE (token generation event).