Driven by the positive news of Trump’s election, the cryptocurrency market experienced a celebratory rally, with Ethereum surging by 13.18%, surpassing Bitcoin in gains. However, a whale took advantage of the situation to sell off Ethereum worth $24.03 million, leading to concerns about whether a short-term peak has been reached.
(Previous Context:
ETH/BTC fell below 0.035, hitting a new 3-year low. Can Trump’s election even save Ethereum?)
(Background Supplement:
Four major whales sold $600 million ETH in one month. Can the upcoming Pectra upgrade save Ethereum?)
Following the crypto-friendly Trump election and the elimination of uncertainties surrounding the presidential election, cryptocurrencies saw a celebratory rally, with Ethereum experiencing a long-awaited surge surpassing Bitcoin. According to Binance spot market data, Ethereum was only at $2,600 yesterday (6th) when Bitcoin broke through $75,000. Even when Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $76,400 at around 4 a.m., Ethereum only neared $2,700.
However, when Bitcoin’s subsequent rally paused, Ethereum continued to rise sharply, hitting a high of $2,837.2 at around 9:30 a.m. today, now reported at $2,817.33, up over 13.18% in the last 24 hours. This has reversed the ETH/BTC ratio, which had been hitting new lows, now reported at 0.03729, up 3.55% in the last 24 hours.
ETH Price Trend Chart
Whale Sells During Surge
As the representative of altcoins, Ethereum saw a significant increase not seen for a long time, coupled with Bitcoin’s market dominance remaining above 60%, fueling expectations for the arrival of an “altcoin season.”
However, an old whale began selling at this time. According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin’s monitoring this morning, an address that accumulated 11,004.9 ETH 8 years ago at a price of $3.45 each ended its long dormancy and started selling off these ETH in large quantities. Starting at 8 a.m., the whale sold 8,699 ETH within two hours, exchanging them for $24.03 million USDC, with an average selling price of $2,762.
Moreover, according to Ai Yi’s monitoring, a whale from the Ethereum ICO holding 150,000 ETH reportedly sold 15,000 ETH yesterday (6th), worth about $39.38 million. Since September 22, this whale has cumulatively sold 65,000 ETH, worth about $164 million.
Although the whale’s sell-off does not mean Ethereum cannot rise, the continued reduction by the whale raises concerns about whether Ethereum’s current price has reached a short-term peak.
Whale that sold ETH this morning monitored by Yu Jin
Potential Catalysts for Ethereum
Looking ahead to Ethereum’s prospects, one of the most anticipated short-term positives is the Pectra upgrade. This upgrade includes the Prague (execution layer) and Electra (consensus layer) updates, expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
DeFi analyst pointed out that the important updates in the Pectra upgrade include:
– Account abstraction: Simplifies the wallet management process, significantly enhancing user experience;
– Staking optimization: Provides more flexible options for smaller-scale stakers;
– Scalability enhancement: Increases blob capacity to 2-3 times the original.
In response to criticisms that L2 development has led to decreased mainnet revenue and ETH inflation, Federico Brokate, Vice President of 21Shares, stated that there is no need to worry. He compared this to Amazon’s consecutive quarterly losses in the 1990s. He believes that Ethereum, through L2 scaling strategies, is attracting millions of new users at low cost, and eventually, the fees acquired by L2 will become “large enough” to restore Ethereum mainnet revenue to pre-Dencun upgrade levels.
The Ethereum ecosystem boasts top-tier development teams and continuously introduces innovative technologies, maintaining dominance in the DeFi field. Especially in the current popular application narrative, the development prospects of RWA are considered vast, and the main application scenarios are concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet. Additionally, in mid-October, the Ethereum Foundation hired five full-time researchers focused on exploring “emerging applications” on Ethereum, which is also part of market expectations.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin continues to share insights on the technical roadmap. He recently shared goals and implementation methods for the Merge, Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge phases, which will have a profound impact on Ethereum’s future. Particularly in the Surge phase, he emphasized that L1+L2 collaboration will enable Ethereum to reach 100,000 transactions per second, integrate into a unified ecosystem, and further enhance the mainnet’s processing capacity.
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