Ether, the native token of the Ethereum network and the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, broke the $3,000 mark for the first time since March 2, despite interest rate hike by the United States Federal Reserve (Fed).
With the exception of a brief spike above $3,000 early this month on the 2nd day of March and today’s big move to the upside, ether has mostly traded within the $2,400-$2,800 range during March.
Ether was trading $3,014, up over 20% in the last 7 days and over 5% in the last 24 hours. The token powering Ethereum’s blockchain has also broken out relative to the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, bitcoin, which is up 3.8% on the day.
What you should know
- The rally seen today in the market has pushed the cryptocurrency market capitalization above $1.9 trillion, aggressively heading towards the $2 trillion mark, a capitalization point it lost in February, according to CoinMarketCap.
- As previously reported by Nairametrics, there has been a significant uptick in the accumulation of Ether from centralized exchanges.
- According to data provided by Glassnode, an on-chain analytics software tracker, nearly 550,000 ETH, worth approximately $1.66 billion, using the current market price as of the time of this writing, have left centralized trading platforms YtD.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- We are also seeing rallies in other altcoins in the top 20 with AVAX being the leader, as it has gained over 30% in the last 7 days. Cardano’s ADA also leads in terms of daily appreciation as it is currently bullish by over 6%.
Matthew Dibb, the COO and co-founder of Stack Funds told CoinDesk that, “We are seeing some strength in ETH, particularly relative to other assets in the ecosystem. ETH/BTC is now trading at around 0.07 again and will soon me meeting some short-term technical resistance at 0.072. The fundamentals for ETH are aligned for a move upwards, however a rally in ETH would also likely lead to an alt-wide rally across the board.”
