Whales are Abandoning Ethereum, but Retail Investors Sustain the Uptrend

Ethereum industry has been losing whales as the number of big holders dropped to a 3-year low. Instead, it seems to be invaded by retail investors most especially since the middle of 2020.

As other cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin, Bitcoin, etc., are gaining momentum, Ethereum seems to be dropping value in terms of being adopted by whales. Ethereum addresses holding the minimum of about 1,000 ETH coins have plunged in the last few months. Larger wallets (whales) have dropped by about 1k and have hit a fresh low of around 6547 wallets, according to the data by Glassnode.

However, the retail interest for ETH has increased and smaller addresses holding Ethereum portions (non-zero Ethereum addresses) have hit new record levels of more than 55,601,336 on March 16, 2021, from less than 10 million.

The total value stored in Ethereum 2.0 Deposit Contract also recorded a new all-time high (ATH) of more than 3,532,066 ETH tokens which is $6.433 bln worth of Ethereum based on the current price. Ethereum addressees holding about 0.1 ETH (approx. $181.96 mln at press time) also hit a high of about 4.3 mln. Most of these wallets grew significantly in late 2017 and early 2018 and that was the time when ETH price reached its all-time high of $1,430.

Ethereum to hit the $2,000 level soon

At press time, ETH/USD price is sitting at $1,812 with a 24-hour increase of 1.24%, with a market cap of $208.395 billion and volume of $24.817 bln, according to the data by CoinMarketCap. Last week, Ethereum was trading at $1,720 with a vol of $22.370 bln and MC of $199.274 bln. That the value of the tokens has increased by over 25% in just 7 days, meaning that the shift to retail investment did not negatively affect the altcoin.

Ethereum 2.0 is expected to be launched soon and both retail and whale investors are eager for this product. This is likely to push the price of Ethereum further to hit and surpass the $2k cap – a thing it last achieved on February 20, 2021, when it recorded a new all-time high of $2036.29.

With ETH 2.0, the contemporary proof-of-work (POW) chain will work simultaneously with the new proof-of-stake (POS) shard chains. The issuance of ETH 2.0 will happen on the shard chains, and users will be in a position to transfer Ethereum tokens directly from the POW chain to a shard chain.