Ethereum’s spectacular climb in the second month of 2020 allowed it to tap as high as $280 before the bears got in the driver’s seat. But despite the downturn, reports showed that top ethereum holders were accumulating the crypto-asset. This observation was made by analytics firm Santiment sometime last week. The trend meant that these whales were bullish about the price of ETH in the short-term.
Santiment further noted that this is generally a positive sign for the bulls as it implies that the coin could see an impressive rally in the following days.
However, it now appears that these whales have changed course. The research firm recently noted that the top 100 ETH holders that were accumulating last week begun dumping their ETH stashes on the market almost immediately. As such, ETH, which performed particularly well in February -even better than BTC- has now lost more than bitcoin in the last seven days.
Did Whales Cause ETH To Plummet By Over 13% In A Week?
Yesterday, on March 11, ethereum dropped below $200 after shedding more than 6.78 percent of its value against the US dollar. On a weekly basis, ETH is down by a whopping 16.9 percent. This comes as global markets continue bleeding due to the coronavirus outbreak.
In a new report published by Santiment yesterday, ETH whales have dumped around 400,000 ETH over the last 5-day period. These whale movements were witnessed prior to and immediately after the catastrophic market-wide correction that occurred on March 8 and 9. In particular, Santiment notes that the whales started dumping immediately after their post on March 4.
The research firm posited that while top non-exchange wallets dumped, the opposite has been seen with the largest exchange wallets. These wallets added as much as 350,000 ETH and are now sitting at a 10-month high of just under 10 million ETH.
“In summation, there has been a number of high-profile transfers of ETH to exchanges in days leading up to and immediately after the latest market drop, as some whales look increasingly comfortable with cashing out on a few months of gains,” Santiment finalized.
Will The Ethereum Price Continue To Fall?
A few hours ago analyst Crypto Michaël noted that losing support at $195 could lead to ETH revisiting $170 in the near-term. ETH is now hovering at around $173.56 at the time of publication. Thus, we can expect further losses in the near-term.
But, even though technical indicators suggest that ETH could see more downsides, its fundamentals are robust as ever. The total value locked in DeFi currently stands at $880.71 million, according to DeFiPulse.
Additionally, data provided by on-chain market analysis firm Glassnode shows that the number of ethereum addresses with a non-zero balance has risen from 23,595,833 to 36,890,385 in the last year. This is an increase of more than 56% and is a bullish signal.
Moreover, ethereum is still on track to transition to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism with ETH 2.0 this year. Last month, ETH developers revealed that they are 95% confident about the long-awaited ETH 2.0 launching as early as July 30.
