As we approach this summer’s upcoming upgrade to Ethereum 2.0, investors anticipate bullish behavior as over $500 million worth of ETH was withdrawn from crypto exchanges last week.
Recent data released by IntoTheBlock revealed that 180,000 ETH was withdrawn from exchanges on March 15 – the most substantial aggregated exchange withdrawal of Ethereum since October of last year. Within 10 days, Ethereum’s price increased 15%, with it now at a price of $2,969 as of press time.
This is the second-highest 7-day increase for the top ten cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, behind AVAX at 25.9%, according to Coingecko.
The upcoming upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 will take place in summer 2022, where the protocol’s consensus mechanism will change from PoW to PoS.
Investors bullish on Ethereum
Blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis suggests that a maximum of 352,317 ETH may have left exchanges in one day – the magnitude of which hasn’t been estimated by the firm in the last six months, believing these large outflows to be “bullish” indicators.
“Assets held on exchanges increase if more market participants want to sell than to buy and, if buyers choose to store their assets on exchanges,” said the company.
Glassnode data shows that nearly 550,000 ETH have left centralized exchanges to date, reducing the net ETH balance to 21.72 million – from a peak of 31.68 million ETH in mid-2020.
Another 200,000 ETH was staked in Lido’s stETH pools. Lido is a staking service which enables users to surmount difficulties related to staking on Ethereum 2 Beacon Chain, including upholding the requirement of staking at least 32 ETH or multiples thereof.
Overall, ETH holders added over 1 million ETH into Lido’s Ethereum 2.0 smart contract.
Broader crypto rally in progress
ETH’s gains follow the uptrend that nine of the top ten coins have experienced in the last week. All coins except Terra (LUNA) increased by a minimum of 5% this week due to the Federal Reserve’s 0.25% interest rate hike on Wednesday.
Bitcoin is up 8%, seeing a possible 39,000 BTC egress on Mar. 18, 2022, amounting to $1.6 billion.
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