The crypto market has recently experienced a significant decline due to the tensions in the Middle East, with many major assets shedding their newly gained gains in the past week. Specifically, the price of Ethereum crashed from over $2,600 to as low as $2,300 at some point during the week.
This represents a new reversal for the “king of altcoins,” which has not had a particularly good performance in the past few months. Interestingly, popular crypto pundit X has come up with an on-chain observation of Ethereum investor behavior in the last quarter.
How Ethereum Whales Shave Its Assets Will Affect Price
In a recent post on the X social media platform, crypto analyst Ali Martinez revealed that a group of Ethereum whales have been stripped of their holdings over the past few months. This on-chain revelation is based on the Mega-Whale address count, which tracks the number of addresses holding more than 10,000 units of a particular cryptocurrency.
Whales refer to entities (individuals and organizations) that own significant amounts of a particular cryptocurrency (Ether, in this case). Investors tend to pay close attention to the movements of whales, as these large companies often have a significant impact on market capitalization and prices due to their large holdings.
Source: Ali_charts/X
According to Martinez, the number of whale addresses holding more than 10,000 ETH has decreased by more than 7% since July 2024. This decrease in the number of large Ethereum population points to some distribution or profit taking and suggests a significant change in market sentiment, especially among large investors and institutional players.
Interestingly, this decrease in whale addresses coincided with a period when the price of Ethereum was struggling. Despite the approval and launch of ETH exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the price of the altcoin fell from over $3,500 in July to as low as $2,200 in August.
As already seen in the price action of the token in the last few months, the decline of major Ethereum holders can reduce the buying pressure to a large extent, leading to sluggish price movements. In addition, the ongoing profit-taking activities of these whales may cause downward pressure on the price of ETH.
The highest amount of ETH
As of this writing, the price of Ethereum is sitting above the 2,400 mark, showing an insignificant decrease of 0.1% in the last 24 hours. The cryptocurrency’s performance over the course of the week is not insignificant, as the price of ETH has fallen by almost 10% in the past seven days.
The price of ETH rebounds from $2,300 on the daily timeframe | Source: ETHUSDT chart on TradingView
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
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