Ethereum whales have registered a sharp uptick in activity in the past few days, making nearly 2,600 transactions worth over $1 million each yesterday alone. This is the highest number of such transaction activities in a day since January.
#Ethereum‘s whales have been extremely active today, firing off 2,596 transactions valued at $1M or more. This is the highest day of whale transactions since January, and something to monitor if $ETH drops below $2k for the first time since last July. https://t.co/FZoTsFJwEn pic.twitter.com/MVFEpzysxN — Santiment (@santimentfeed) May 11, 2022
The company noted that this increase in activity came amid the market-wide retracement that sent shockwaves among the entire crypto space. Ethereum, for one, stood at $3,000 until May 5 before it suddenly plummeted by $300 in minutes. The situation only worsened in the following days, and ETH found itself fighting to stay above $2,000.
This psychological support line finally gave in yesterday and ether dumped to $1,700. This became its lowest price since last April. However, ETH reacted well to this drop and now trades around $2,100.
Ethereum Whales’ Recent Behavior
According to Santiment, an Ethereum investor is regarded as a whale after attaining $1 million or more.
“For many assets, these would be addresses with $100k or more. For Bitcoin and Ethereum, due to the incomparable market cap levels, whales are typically more defined as anywhere between $1M or more, to $10M or more (depending on current price levels).” – the firm explained last month.
On May 2, Santiment reported that deep-pocketed Ethereum investors have started to aggressively accumulate ETH after four months of inactivity. The market intelligence firm said that entities holding between 1,000 and 10,000 ETH have suddenly added a combined 142,000 ETH, worth about $407,415,040 at the time.
Fundamental Aspects
The Ethereum ecosystem is preparing for its largest event, dubbed The Merge, which will see the blockchain adopting a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm instead of the recently criticized proof-of-work.
This transition has been viewed as a highly bullish move, with a substantial number of institutional and prominent investors wanting to get on board.
According to Ethereum.org, the total number of ETH staked is over 12,500,000 units by almost 400,000 validators as of today. Additionally, the ecosystem continues with its burning program that has a significant impact on the market price. More than 2.3 million ETH have already been eradicated from existence.