Ethereum experienced extreme selling pressure over the weekend, despite a price rebound of around 40% between 24 January & 10 February. On Monday, the crypto asset fell to $2,840, its lowest level since 4 Februar.
Ethereum’s price drop of $3,000 caused a sharp decline in network activity. According to Santiment’s data the transaction count on ETH has fallen. The median fees also fell to their lowest level in almost 7 months.
Overall network activity has decreased, but whale activity on the ETH network is increasing. A crypto whale sent 26,700 Ethereum, worth nearly $77 million, to an unknown wallet on 14 February.
“With ETH falling back below $3,000 the demand for ETH transactions has remained relatively low.” This means that transaction fees are officially at their lowest level in 2021, as reported by Santiment .
Other digital currencies such as Ethereum and ADA also struggled in the last few days.
Ethereum 2.0
Despite price drops, investors continued to show interest in Ethereum 2.0, the long-awaited upgrade to the ETH network. The network upgrade deposit contract for ETH now holds more than 9.4million coins, with a total worth of $27 billion. ETH 2.0 has been attracting a lot of attention from institutional and retail investors since the December 2020 launch of Beacon Chain. Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of Ethereum), stated that the network upgrade will make it easier and more cost-effective to transact.
Even in bearish markets, ETH whales continue to accumulate the crypto asset. “ETH whale owners continue to trend assets towards non-exchange addresses despite the volatility of the last months.” Santiment stated that the top 10 largest nonexchange addresses currently hold 24.31M Ethereum.
