On February 20, Lookonchain data revealed that an early investor in the 2014 Initial Coin Offering (ICO) and an Ethereum whale profited when prices briefly hit $3,000.
Is the $3,000 ETH Whale Exit Bullish or Bearish?
On-chain data indicates that the whale purchased 3,465 ETH for roughly $10.30 during the ICO and was dormant for 8.6 years before today’s liquidation. At that point, each token sold for $0.31.
In the early New York session on February 20, prices surged briefly above $3,000, leading the whale to re-enter the market. Data from the address lookonchain shows approximately 1,732 ETH, worth around $5.15 million, were transferred to Kraken. The whale achieved a return on investment of over 9,600X when it exited at about $3,000.
As expected, there is still debate and conjecture surrounding the transfer. Given Ethereum’s recent spectacular gains, the move might have been profit-taking. Nevertheless, $3,000 can be seen as local resistance, given that large transfers to centralised exchanges are a negative indication.
This assumption may be correct, given that ETH bulls haven’t been able to break above $3,000, even with the recent strong upswings. Early 2022 was the last time buyers were in this market. Subsequently, the coin fell below $1,000 in late 2022, following a correction from its all-time highs of approximately $5,000 recorded in 2021 and before the crash.
Since then, ETH’s price has more than doubled, rising in 2023 and continuing to climb in early 2024. Whether the uptrend, which propelled ETH above $3,000 and toward $5,000 in the coming months, will persist remains uncertain.
Ethereum Wins DeFi, Ready For Upgrade To Dencun
Trades in ETH are excessively optimistic about the future. The majority point to the network’s dominance as a facilitator of other on-chain activities, such as minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralised finance (DeFi). Over $76 billion in assets are managed by different DeFi protocols under the direction of Lido Finance, a liquidity staking platform, according to DefiLlama data.
In addition to Ethereum’s growing popularity, network upgrades are good. Developers are currently getting ready for Dencun’s mainnet rollout. Proto-dank sharding, an essential stage before sharding, is introduced in this update.
Ethereum wants to grow on-chain by dividing the network into functional “shards” capable of handling a certain number of transactions. According to this model, the platform can host even more complex protocols because the network can handle more transactions simultaneously.
