Ethereum’s native coin, ether, is experiencing a surge, trading above $2100 across various crypto exchanges, marking a 10% increase in the past 24 hours. This price jump coincides with the recent Shapella upgrade, which has unlocked staked funds on the Ethereum network. As a result, over $2 billion worth of ether has been confirmed for withdrawal, with 1.07 million ETH pending.
In the next few hours, an estimated 53,050 ether worth $111.81 million is expected to be withdrawn, resulting in an average of $223.54 million in ETH being withdrawn daily. Despite these massive withdrawals, 17.39 million ether (excluding earned rewards) remains deposited, accounting for 15.42% of the total supply.
Interestingly, the net staking balance yesterday was actually positive. Partial withdrawals amounted to 14,300, while deposits reached 18,370. This implies that 4,070 more ETH was deposited than withdrawn. However, since the Shapella hard fork went live, the net staking balance is nearly 140,000. Withdrawn ether amounts to 247,820, while deposited ETH is less than half of the withdrawn amount at 107,790 coins, according to a report from The Block.
Kraken withdraws Ethereum worth $1 billion
A notable unstaker is the centralized exchange Kraken, which has initiated withdrawal requests totaling over 551,000 ETH ($1 billion). This massive unstaking effort by Kraken is driven by its settlement of charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly failing to register its staking program in the country where the crypto exchange agreed to pay a $30 million fine.
On the other end of the spectrum, one peer-to-peer staking pool deposited nearly 50,200 ether yesterday. Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade, which went live just before 6:30 p.m. EDT on April 12 at block height 6209536, is the first significant change since last year’s Merge transitioned the protocol to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
The Shapella hard fork implemented Ethereum Improvement Proposal 4895, effectively allowing users and validators to withdraw their staked ether. Additionally, the Shapella upgrade optimizes Ethereum gas fees on certain transactions.
Ether’s recent price surge has led to a decline in Bitcoin’s market dominance. According to data from btctools.io, Ether’s market share has climbed to 19.8% over the past 24 hours, while Bitcoin’s dominance slid by just under 1%. Since the beginning of the year, ETH dominance has increased by 7.6%.
With Bitcoin’s market share falling to 47.7% as Ethereum’s increases, the post-Shapella ETH rally has knocked BTC off its nearly two-year high in terms of market share. Bitcoin and Ether combined represent around 68% of the total crypto market, with the remaining 22% being shared among the other 10,800+ tokens listed on CoinGecko.
Ether has surged 10.25% over the past 24 hours, tapping an eleven-month high of $2,122 at the time of writing.
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