The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) has given another major breakout just a week before the Shanghai upgrade. As of press time, Ethereum (ETH) is trading up by 5.68% at a price of $1,911 and a market cap of $230 billion.
On the weekly chart, ETH has outperformed the rest of the altcoins as well as Bitcoin with 7.3% gains. It is for the first time since August 2022 that the ETH price has surged past the $1,870 level.
On-chain data provider Santiment explains that this 8-month high comes due to the steady accumulation of ETH sharks over the past few months. It reported:
“Ethereum jumped back over $1,870 today for the first time since August 17, 2022. This near 8-month high comes as sharks have been accumulating steadily since last summer. Addresses holding 100-10k $ETH have accumulated $4.24B in the past 9 months”.
With today’s price surge above $1,900, Ethereum (ETH) extends its 2023 gains to more than 60% closing the gap with Bitcoin. Popular crypto analyst Ali Martinez noted:
On-chain data reveals that the next critical resistance area is between $2,100 and $2,150, where over 200K addresses had previously purchased over 18M $ETH.
Ethereum Liquidity on the Downtrend
Although the crypto market has registered a strong recovery this year in 2023, liquidity remains one of the major concerns for the top two digital assets – Bitcoin and Ethereum. Blockchain analytics firm Kaiko reported that ever since the FTX exchange collapse, the Ethereum market depth has been on a downtrend. The report notes:
When charting the quantity of bids and asks within 2% of the mid price on USD/USDT order books, we can observe an unsurprisingly similar downwards trend. In mid-March, ETH market depth hits its lowest level since last May.
When compared to Bitcoin, Ethereum’s drop in market depth is less extreme. While BTC’s drop in market depth is at 50%, ETH’s is at 41%. Kaiko adds: “Overall, both assets have suffered in the aftermath of the FTX collapse and banking crisis, with fewer market makers supplying liquidity to order books”.
