Data from cryptocurrency analytics firm Santiment shows that Ethereum whales – wallets or clusters of wallets with over 10,000 ETH – have “not budged” during the recent market sell-off that saw ETH’s value drop by over 25% from its all-time high.
According to Santiment, Ethereum whales with over $34.3 million worth of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization barely touched their funds during the sell-ff, with only 8 addresses moving out of the category.
On the other hand, Ethereum addresses holding between 100 and 10,000 ETH seemingly sold some of their holdings during the downturn, with the number of addresses on this category ultimately dropping to a three-year low.
The market sell-off didn’t just affect ether but most other cryptoassets including bitcoin. IT was seemingly a result of Tesla CEO Elon Musk announcing the firm would no longer accept BTC payments over environmental concerns. Musk then faced backlash from the community and ultimately implied Tesla could sell the BTC in its treasury.
The price of Ethereum dropped during the sell-off from an all-time high above $4,300 to a $3,100 low before it started recovering. At press time, ETH is trading close to $3,500 and is rising rapidly.
As the sell-off was ongoing, the electric car marker’s CEO clarified it had not sold any of its BTC holdings. Musk had also revealed Tesla was looking into greener cryptocurrencies, which saw the value of some tokens using a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm surge.
Ethereum currently uses a Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm that, much like that of BTC, consumes a hefty amount of energy. It will however transition to a PoS system in the future. As first reported by CryptoPotato Carl Beekhuizen, a researcher from the Ethereum Foundation, revealed in a post the move could see ETH’s energy consumption drop by as much as 99.95%.
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