Ethereum Whale Addresses Rise Sharply as ETH Moves Back Up to $1,500

The Ethereum network has been slowly preparing to switch to the proof of stake consensus method.

By Shomik Sen Bhattacharjee | Updated: 19 July 2022 20:20 IST

Ethereum Whale Addresses Rise Sharply as ETH Moves Back Up to $1,500

Photo Credit: Unsplash/ Kanchanara

Renewed clarity about the timeline of Ethereum's PoS switch has boosted ETH's value

Highlights

The Merge is expected to happen sometime around September 19
ETH had plummeted to around $1,000 not too long ago
A shadow fork for the anticipated switch went live last week

The announcement of the anticipated upgrade, The Merge, on the Ethereum network made positive impact on its native asset ETH as well as its staked derivative on Lido finance called staked Ether (stETH) and that has resulted in an increase in the number of whales too. Last Thursday, Ethereum Foundation member Tim Beiko suggested September 19 as the provisional launch date for The Merge, which will see the Ethereum network transition from the energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism to a more environment-friendly proof-of-stake mechanism.

As per on-chain analysis provider Santiment, the so-called whales — holding between 1,000 to 100,000 ETH — had seen a sharp increase in the past few weeks after bottoming in May, which halted a months-long negative streak.

???? #Ethereum has recovered quite well in July, up +29% for the month and +14% alone in the past 24 hours. Additionally, there's an increase in the key 1k to 100k $ETH address tier since early May where 131 new whale addresses have popped up on the network. https://t.co/uGfRQ4dEls pic.twitter.com/ri8MhGIP0o
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) July 17, 2022

More precisely, there were 131 new such wallets emerging until Sunday, with the total number briefly exceeding 6,666. The trend is similar with smaller Ether investors too with those holding at least a full one has charted an all-time high of over 1.5 million. Addresses with 100 or more coins, on the other hand, are up to a 15-month high of more than 45,000.

???? #Ethereum's return above $1,500 for the first time since June 12th appears to be happening as the crowd has little belief in this rebound. Despite this, the average $ETH return of 30-day traders has ballooned to +28%, the highest since August, 2021. https://t.co/KsTbw9Iaev pic.twitter.com/7oqdGgK9pB
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) July 18, 2022

Meanwhile, the price of Ether has surged by close to 40 percent too climbing from the $1,050 (roughly Rs. 84,015) price range to $1,526 (roughly Rs. 1.22 lakh) at the time of publishing. A few days before the shadow fork went live, ETH had plummeted to around $1,000 (roughly Rs. 80,015), and the community feared another drop below that line. However, the hype didn't allow such a dip, and the second-largest crypto went on a roll.

The highly anticipated upgrade in the Ethereum network, The Merge is expected to make the successful transition of blockchain from its current proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof-of-stake. Additionally, this would also bring some cutting-edge features in terms of high transaction speed, low gas fees and scalability.

Noise co-founder Amit Khatri joins Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, for a special episode. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

Affiliate links may be automatically generated - see our ethics statement for details.

Comments

For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who'sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube.