The ethereum (ETH) balance held by exchanges has declined to a new five-year low of 17,945,575.311 ETH. The number of ETH wallet addresses holding 100+ coins has also reached a six-month low of 46,858, data shows.
Despite the current correction being witnessed by bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies, the latest on-chain data released by blockchain analytics company, Glassnode, shows that investors remain quite bullish on Vitalik Buterin’s ethereum (ETH).
Per the researchers, ETH balance on exchanges has hit a new 5-year low of 17,945,575.311. While the exact cause of this decline may be unknown, several factors could be responsible.
The leading smart contracts blockchain network completed its transition to the proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus algorithm in April through the Shanghai upgrade, which enabled staked ETH withdrawals from the beacon chain.
Since most exchanges, including Changpeng Zhao’s Binance, participated in this staking activity, it’s regular for their ETH balances to decrease after withdrawals got activated on the network.
Another factor that could be responsible for the decreasing ETH balances on exchanges could be that more and more investors are now adopting self-custody as a precautionary measure against falling victim to crypto exchange runs such as the abrupt collapse of the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX last year.
The number ether whales decrease
In other ethereum news, the number of ethereum wallet addresses holding over 100 ETH has just hit a six-month low of 46,858, according to Glassnode.
This metric could also be due to increased staking activity by whales and their participation in decentralized finance (DeFi) activities such as liquidity provision and others. The newfound popularity of meme coins, such as PEPE, and others could also be a severe challenge for ether, as these tokens have been attracting capital lately.
At the time of writing, the price of ether (ETH) is back above the $1,800 region, after experiencing a correction to $1,740 on May 12.
The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency has a market cap of $219,165,253,736, with a 24-hour trading volume of $6,207,195,813, according to CoinGecko.