While the price of Ethereum has risen by around 50% this year, the number of addresses holding large amounts of the currency known as whales has declined significantly. The seven day average of the number of unique addresses holding 10,000 ETH or more immediately fell to 1,050 this Tuesday – showing that Ethereum whales are leaving ETH and probably moving to Bitcoin after its halving.
This is the lowest level of ETH whales out there ever since January 2019, according to the data provided by the blockchain intelligence firm Glassnode in the ETH news. We can also notice that the whale addresses are down by around 6% from the December high of 1,115.
However, this metric represents externally owned accounts – or the ones which are controlled by private keys – excluding contract accounts which have their own code and are controlled by this code.
The decline in the number of Ethereum whales and ETH whale addresses is in contrast to the recent rise in the number of Bitcoin whale addresses. This seven-day moving average of the number of addresses holding 10,000 Bitcoins or more rose to 11 at the end of April, which is the highest level since August 2019.
“Some ETH whales could have moved into BTC in anticipation of potential price appreciation in the top cryptocurrency due to effects of the mining reward halving,” said Connor Abendschein, who is the crypto research analyst at Digital Assets Data.
Anyways, Ethereum whales may be flocking to BTC after its halving, which took place on May 11. This was quite strong and the event was extensively discussed by analysts over the past few months. The bullish expectations were reinforced by the quick recovery of Bitcoin to $7,000 in just five days after its drop to $3,867 on March 12.
This may have caused some Ethereum whales to move to BTC – and the divergence could continue to widen because Bitcoin is used mainly as a value storage vehicle. Another possible reason for this big decline in ETH whale addresses could be the increased investor interest in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space.
Anyways, today is a good day on the markets and the price of Ethereum (ETH) in the cryptonews is finally above the $200 mark, while Bitcoin is trading safely at $9,592.
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