Ethereum Merge, ETH’s much-awaited network upgrade, failed to lift the price of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. After touching $1,660 on 15 September 2022, Ethereum reached a low of $1,410 on Saturday. Amid the crypto mayhem, a large Ethereum transfer was observed by Whale Alert, a prominent blockchain tracking and analytics platform.
According to Whale Alert, a leading crypto address moved 109,515 Ethereum worth almost $160 million from an unknown wallet on 16 September. The transfer was executed at around 11:03 UTC. In a separate transfer approximately two hours later, 100,000 ETH coins were moved from an unknown wallet at 13:30 UTC.
Earlier this week, the exchange balance of Ethereum reached 21.96 million, which is the highest level in five months. On top of that, network activity related to ETH spiked substantially last week as the total number of ETH addresses holding at least 10,000 Ethereum touched the level of 1,199 for the first time on record.
The dominance of whale holders across the ETH network has increased in the past few years.
ETH Merge
The crypto community believes that the upgraded network of Ethereum is more efficient. In a recent Tweet, the Co-Founder of ETH, Vitalik Buterin said that the ETH Merge has reduced energy usage significantly.
“From a purely technological perspective, it is difficult to overstate how big of an engineering feat the Merge represents. No analogy could perfectly capture its technological complexity. But, in layman's terms, it is more or less like constructing a new engine for a car that is going at full speed and then switching the engines without the car ever stopping or slowing down. That it was orchestrated by a global network of developers who aren’t managed by any central entity is already a triumph of the core ideals of the crypto space - decentralization, self-governance, and open-source collaboration. At the same time, the big test for Ethereum has only just begun and the stakes are incredibly high,” Anto Paroian, the CEO at ARK36, said.
