As cryptocurrency markets keep shedding the gains seen from a rally earlier this year, Ethereum’s largest holders, colloquially known as whales, have been divesting of their holdings, having already redistributed over 5 million $ETH worth over $8.5 billion.
According to data from on-chain analytics firm Santiment, shared by popular cryptocurrency analyst Ali Martinez, Ethereum whales have been offloading their holdings since February of this year, and the selling trend has been ongoing “with no current indication of a shift towards ETH accumulation yet.”
Whales offloading have been impacting Ethereum’s price, with the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization having lost 4.4% of its value over the last seven days to now trade below the $1,600 mark, while BTC lost 1% of its value over the same period and is above $27,250.
Over the past 12 months, Bitcoin’s price is up more than 42%, significantly outperforming Ethereum, which moved up just 22% over the same period, according to data from CryptoCompare.
As CryptoGlobe reported, the Ethereum Foundation has recently, through the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange Uniswap, sold 1,700 Ether for $2.73 million worth of USDC, in their largest single transaction of the year.
According to on-chain monitoring service Spot On Chain, the Ethereum Foundation’s transaction helped the total amount of ETH the organization sold so far this year reach 2,262 tokens, with most sales coming ahead of cryptocurrency market dips.
Nevertheless, data from the Ethereum blockchain shows that the Ethereum Foundation still has over $500 million worth of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization on its wallet, along with over $340,000 worth of wrapped Ether ($WETH), $38,000 of $DAI, and $9,700 worth of $BNB as well as various other altcoins.
The move also comes a week after Ethereum futures exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were launched in the United States. According to David Duong, Head of Coinbase Research, these ETFs failed to generate the same level of excitement and trading volume as the first BTC futures ETF, ProShares’ BITO, which debuted in October 2021.
Duong pointed out that the top ETH futures ETFs collectively saw less than $1.5 million in trading volume on their first day. In stark contrast, BITO experienced over $1 billion in trading volume on its inaugural day, as per Bloomberg data. Additionally, the net inflow into these ETH futures ETFs was less than 2% of what BITO attracted.
Featured image via Unsplash.
