Whales Moving ETH to Exchanges as the Merge Approaches

Ethereum’s transition to a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm is closing in. Yesterday, the Ethereum foundation revealed that the Merge might even take place sooner than previously expected.

According to the blog post, the mainnet migration to PoS will take place between September 10 and 20 following the Bellatrix upgrade. With that said, data shows that the top non-exchange addresses for Ethereum have been reducing their holdings.

• According to the popular cryptocurrency behavior analysis platform, Santiment, the top 10 non-exchange Ethereum addresses have been reducing their holdings while the top exchange addresses grow.

• Data shows that these non-exchange addresses reduced their exposure by approximately 11% over the past three months.
• This is taking place less than a month before the Merge is expected to take place. It could mean that large entities are preparing to take action depending on how the event goes.
• At the same time, it’s also worth noting that Ethereum appears to be more dominant than Bitcoin in terms of trading volume on quite a few occasions in August.
• Commenting on the matter was a cryptocurrency analyst from the popular research resource CryptoQuant, who argued that:

Almost on every day of August, the trading volume (%) of Ethereum was higher than Bitcoin. For example, on August 22, Ethereum represented 40% of the trading volume on exchanges, while Bitcoin represented only 31%. The percentage left is by trading volume on other altcoins.

• This led the analyst to the conclusion that despite the declining social media chatter about the Merge, “Ethereum is still very popular, and investors are trading the hype.”