Ethereum Whales Add $4.55 Billion Worth of ETH Since September 11

The crypto sector has been trapped in bearish patterns for several weeks, and even big tokens such as Ethereum are under tremendous pressure. This has resulted in the massive dumping of tokens which has further dampened the chances of potential upticks.

However, there have been some signs of accumulation amidst the current market misery.

Accumulation Signs

New data by the crypto-analytic platform, Santiment, depict that Ethereum whale addresses holding one million or more ETH have collectively added 3.5 million more of the asset or $4.55 billion in their bags in the past few months. With the subsequent additions, the holding of this particular cohort of investors, with 132 addresses, has increased by more than 14%.

“Ethereum billionaire whale addresses holding 1M or more ETH have collectively added 3.5M more coins. This has increased their cumulative bags by +14%. There are currently 132 such addresses in existence.”

The price of the world’s largest altcoin has been hammered by the freezing crypto winter. It was down by over 75% since its ATH at nearly $5,000 more than a year ago. The highlight-anticipated Ethereum “Merge,” too, turned out to be a “buy the rumor, sell the news” event and failed to meaningfully change the token’s price trajectory. In fact, ETH has shed 21% since the transition.

But the latest accumulation trend contradicts that of another cohort of big investors – sharks and whales – that have decreased by more than 3 million ETH in the last five weeks. This could essentially point towards a shift or redistribution among large Ethereum holders that further drove the selling pressure pushing ETH price to levels not seen since July this year.

🐳 The #Ethereum #merge on 9/15 has brought on a shift in large address behavior. In the past 6 days since the shift to #proofofstake, addresses holding 1k to 10k $ETH have dropped 2.24% of their cumulative holdings. 100 to 1k addresses have dropped 1.41%. https://t.co/qdOVcdDjgC pic.twitter.com/fcFy8hTUGD

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) September 21, 2022

Gauging Deeper

Ethereum outflows from centralized exchanges also point towards a growing sentiment of accumulation among investors. Glassnode data showed negative exchange net flows for Ethereum for the past two weeks. A similar trend was seen with respect to the daily figures as well, where outflows continued to surpass inflows, thereby resulting in negative net flows.

Mainstream adoption of Ethereum has instilled some faith among investors. For instance, the 239-year-old Bank of New York Mellon launched its own Ethereum custody service along with Bitcoin. More recently, Fidelity’s crypto-focussed arm is planning to offer ETH trading for its institutional clients starting at October-end.

On the NFT side of things, the volume of Ethereum may have decreased since April, but the newly-transitioned proof-of-stake blockchain is still the market leader when it comes to such sales. Despite the emergence of “Ethereum Killers,” it still hosts the most blue-chip collections, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Crypto Punks. Data from Dune Analytics suggest that the USD value is still far higher on Ethereum.

It is worth noting that creators of NFT projects can relatively easily wash trade on other blockchains, such as Solana, in a bid to artificially pump volume, thanks to its low transaction fees. However, the same cannot be done on Ethereum, as that would be far more expensive.