After a price recovery of approximately 40% between 24 January and 10 February, Ethereum witnessed extreme selling pressure again over the weekend. The crypto asset touched a low of $2,840 on Monday, which is the lowest level since 4 February.
As Ethereum failed to retain the price level of $3,000, its network activity decreased sharply. According to Santiment’s data, the transaction count on the ETH network has decreased. With that, the median fees have also plunged to the lowest level in nearly 7 months.
While overall network activity has declined, whale activity across the ETH network has increased. On 14 February, a crypto whale transferred 26,700 Ethereum worth almost $77 million to an unknown wallet.
“With ETH dropping back below $3,000, the demand to make ETH transactions has stayed relatively low. And with this, transaction fees are now officially at their lowest level since July 28, 2021,” Santiment Tweeted.
Apart from Ethereum, other digital currencies like BTC, BNB, XRP, ADA and SOL have struggled during the last few days.
Ethereum 2.0
Despite the price dips, the much-awaited upgrade of the ETH network, Ethereum 2.0 has seen a consistent rise in interest from investors. The deposit contract of the network upgrade of ETH now has more than 9.4 million coins with a total value of over $27 billion. Since the launch of Beacon Chain in December 2020, ETH 2.0 has gained a lot of interest from retail and institutional investors. According to Vitalik Buterin, the Co-Founder of Ethereum, the network upgrade will make the transaction process smooth and cost-effective.
Even in the bearish market, ETH whales are accumulating the crypto asset. “ETH whale holders continue trending assets toward non-exchange addresses in spite of the past months of volatility. The top 10 largest non-exchange addresses now hold 24.31M ETH,” Santiment noted.
