Project developers must definitely cash it out in fiat to carry out the project, if the entire project that had carried out their ICO through Ethereum had left their money in the wallet, the value of ethereum would have probably reached ~$2000 by now.
But this was always to be expected from such a coin. Ether had its intrinsic value in being the fuel to power dapps and transactions, and secure different networks but the flood of ICOs raising money in ETH basically spelled the death of Ether,,, at least temporarily. Not a single person can say that $1400 was an appropriate price for ETH, not at the time, Today at least we see a more reasonable estimation, and now, when news like this French bank taking it on become the norm, then we can see a gradual and reasonable increase in value.