Despite the bearish first quarter in the cryptocurrency space, we are seeing net accumulation of tokens at an astronomical rate. Last week, we saw the ADA whales accumulate and increase their bags by over 40% Year-to-Date (YtD), today we are seeing the amount of Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain, kept with crypto exchanges, has fallen to its lowest levels since September 2018, signalling investors intention to hold the tokens in hopes of a price rally in 2022.
Notably, nearly 550,000 ETH, worth approximately $1.61 billion, using the current market price as of the time of this writing, have left centralized trading platforms YtD, according to data provided by Glassnode. The massive outflow has reduced the exchange’s net-Ether balance to 21.72 million ETH, down from its record high of 31.68 million ETH in June 2020.
Read: KPMG Canada adds Bitcoin and Ether to its balance sheet
Also, to note, according to data from IntoTheBlock, over 30% of all Ether’s withdrawals from exchanges witnessed in 2022 appeared last week. In detail, over 180,000 ETH left crypto trading platforms on March 15, bringing the weekly outflow, worth to a little over $500 million as of March 18.
What you should know
- Chainalysis data report revealed similar readings, showing that Ether tokens could have left exchanges this week at an average of about 120,000 units per day, a bullish signal.
- The report reads, “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.”
- IntoTheBlock provided a similar upside outlook while citing a fractal from October 2021 that saw the Ether’s price rising by 15% ten days after the Ethereum network detected massive ETH withdrawals from centralized crypto exchanges.
- IntoTheBlock noted that the increase in Ether withdrawals from exchanges this week coincided with about 190,000 ETH moving into Lido’s “stETH liquid stakin” pools.
- Lido is a noncustodial staking service that enables users to overcome challenges associated with staking on the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain, including the requirement of staking a minimum of 32 ETH or its multiples. Furthermore, Lido proposes to solve the capital efficiency problem by issuing stETH, the tokenized version of staked ETH.
Read: $1 billion worth of Ether was burned in January as OpenSea transaction volume spikes
The last 30 days showed Ether holders adding over 1 million ETH into the Ethereum 2.0 contract. As the protocol prepares to switch completely to proof-of-stake (PoS) in the summer, in the wake of its “Merge” earlier this week on the Kiln testnet, the probability of more Ether tokens going out of active supply has increased.