"Waah seriously? Is everyone still holding ETH or has anyone sold it?"
The second largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) which climbed to $3,824 has plunged back to $3,230 due to Bitcoin (BTC), but there are 3 reasons why the price could reach $4,000 in the short term.
One of the factors supporting the rise of ETH is reducing supply in crypto exchanges, where the total balance between inflows and outflows from all known crypto exchange wallets has shown a sharp decline since October 2023.
Reducing the balance of ETH on crypto exchanges means that investors can withdraw their tokens into their own storage wallets which shows their lack of intention to sell in anticipation of future price increases.
As wallets holding $100,000 or more in ETH increased from 94,620 to 141,406, whales were found not to be selling the digital asset but to continue to accumulate it for more profit.
Also contributing to the decrease in ETH available for trading is the increase in the amount of ETH staking on the Beacon Chain as more than 31.58 million ETH worth $119.8 billion is now staking on the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) layer protocol.
So here it can be seen that 26.3% of the ETH supply has been staked plus the total value locked (TVL) on EtherFi has exceeded $2 billion which highlights the increasing popularity and use of the ETH liquidity protocol.
Increased demand for leverage also resulted in a rise in ETH futures open interest (OI) amounting to $11.98 billion which is close to the highest level of $13 billion ever witnessed on November 9, 2021.
Now, the ETH on-chain and derivative markets reflect investors' confidence and anticipation for spot approval of the ETH ETF plus there is a Dencun upgrade that could drive the price higher.
As of this writing, ETH price is down 3.23% at $3,509 in the last 24 hours with a market cap of $421 billion but still recorded a 8.12% jump over the last week.
