Ethereum's exchange holdings rise ahead of merger

Ethereum’s growth and upcoming mergers are topics that have attracted most crypto attention lately. Ahead of the special event, on-chain data recorded an increase in the exchange’s whale address holdings.

Merge: On-Chain Review

From Blockchain Analytics Firm Data from Sentiment shows that the holding gap between non-exchange and exchange addresses has narrowed.

Over the past 3 months, some whale addresses holding large amounts of ETH have sent their holdings to exchanges. This resulted in an 11% drop in non-exchange wallets, while exchange-based wallets increased by 78%.

However, although the data on the chain often has a certain lag with the market price reaction, it is also one of the reliable indicators that investors refer to when making decisions. Best decision for yourself, especially with Ethereum being quite sensitive right now.

Considering on-chain metrics can be well-prepared for investors and traders, especially when the market is flooded with FOMO.

It may not mean rebound

sentiment The data shows a relatively large amount of ETH circulating on exchanges, which tends to reflect negative sentiment and expectations of lower prices in the short term. As a result, they will sell their holdings, inadvertently creating a strong emission pressure on ETH.

The highly anticipated Merge is scheduled for September 15-16. The development team recently announced that the testnet Goerli has been successful – Goerli is the final tesnet integration before major changes to the mainnet.

According to CoinMarketCap statistics, ETH surged by over $2,000 before correcting around $1,500 (at the time of writing).

Price declines can be explained by general market conditions, macro conditions and many other factors. In addition, the latest speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Powell yesterday may have contributed to the doom for the global financial industry.

As the Federal Reserve Chairman emphasized the authorities’ commitment to lowering inflation with a target of 2%, more aggressive measures may be taken in raising interest rates in order to curb inflation.

The market arrived quickly after the speech and prices fell overall. Bitcoin has lost 4% in the past 24 hours and is currently trading at the $20,000 mark.

The euphoria and psychological euphoria surrounding the bullish aspect of ETH before the merger shows no signs of cooling, despite recent price declines.

A developing story

There have been some important developments recently, such as Bitfinex’s decision to allow users to trade “Ethereum off-chain” tokens, Coinbase’s announcement that it will launch an ETH2.0 staking token,

Ethereum’s decision to exploit its Four times the value of the bounty reward, and various opinions on the possibility of forking ETH into two different chains, ETH Proof-of-Work (ETHW) and ETH Proof-of-Stake (ETHS). These prove that all interest is focused on the upgrade.

Earlier this week, the Bitfinex exchange announced that it now offers the Ethereum Split Chain Token (CST). This token represents two systems linked to The Merge, ETH Proof-of-Work (ETHW) and ETH Proof-of-Stake, which can be obtained through exchanges (ETHS).

These Bitfinex have issued new tokens that users will be able to trade during a potential fork and will earn these tokens through Bitfinex’s derivatives platform.

The Ethereum Foundation announced in a published blog post that on April 24, from August 24 to September 8, all Merge-related bounties for finding bugs on the network will increase by four times.

Meanwhile, Coinbase said it will list Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (cbETH) as an ERC-20 token, allowing customers to use staked Ether (ETH) while still earning rewards on the exchange.

To prevent uncertainty ahead of the merger, the exchange previously announced a suspension of ETH and ERC-20 withdrawals and deposits during the merger. Binance is not far behind.

The Ethereum development team has determined the exact time when they will deploy Merge based on the schedule, although unforeseen circumstances may arise.

The Bellatrix upgrade is scheduled for September 6th.