Key facts:
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The 332,000 ethers withdrawn in one day reflects the largest extraction in a year.
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There are more than 21 million ETH in exchanges, the lowest number since 2018.
Statistics on ethers (ETH) stored on cryptocurrency exchanges are showing numbers not seen for a long time. Specifically, the units of the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network in exchange houses reflect an unprecedented figure for a year.
The analytics firm Glassnode details a total outflow of 455,000 ETH (approximately $1.342 million) from exchanges in the week of March 11 to 18 of the same month. Likewise, there was a concentration of 332,000 ETH (USD 979 million) extracted on Tuesday, March 15. That day, the price of ETH went from USD 2,615 to USD 2,722, which represents an increase of 5%.
Following the same graph, it can be seen that there has not been such a significant negative change in the balance sheet since January 2021when it went from having 27.8 million ETH on these platforms to just over 27.2 million of the cryptocurrency.
In addition, in the course of Tuesday, March 15 alone, exchange houses have seen 180,000 ETH transferred to other external addresses, according to informs Decryt portal. At the current market value of the cryptocurrency, this equates to $527.7 million.
Although the two sources differ in the measurements of the outflows according to each day, both confirm the outflow movement from the exchange houses.
After this “escape” exchanged ethers are now just over 21.6 million. This figure, as can be seen in the Glassnode graph below, has not been recorded since 2018, when the issued units of this cryptocurrency were much less and the accumulation in exchanges began to increase.
In this sense, it must be considered that the deposit of ethers in the Ethereum 2.0 smart contract, the new version of the blockchain that will be activated soon, also has an influence. By the end of February, there were already more than 9.6 million staked in that contract.
On the other hand, some larger traders may also have played a role. According to what was published by the data analysis platform Santiment and Twitter, In recent days, 7,000 movements greater than USD 100,000 were registered on the Ethereum network for the first time since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
This might be seen as the end of a lethargic moment in the market. For some traders, it might obviously be a sign of the bull market who were waiting with their ethers well kept in their wallets. At first, The cryptocurrency had an increase of 15% this Friday compared to the previous week, according to CoinMarketCap.
The reasons for this exit of ethers from exchanges
As reported two months ago in CriptoNoticias regarding the bitcoin decline (BTC) in exchange housesthis information is a reflection of how the market is movingor at least part of it, and the strategies of those who participate.
The numbers seem to indicate that traders do not want to sell, but prefer to store their ethers waiting for an increase in its price market, which at the closing of this note is USD 2,931 according to the price index of CryptoNews.
As you can see in the chart below, this is lower than the value the leading cryptocurrency had just three months ago, when it averaged $3,900, following its all-time high in November 2021.
If this apparent accumulation phase continues, a future supply shock or supply shock on exchanges. This is a shortage in the supply of an asset. In such a case, the price of ether might rise, due to low liquidity on exchanges.
According to what was mentioned above, it is a scenario that traders are beginning to foresee, and that is why they are betting on the long term by storing their crypto assets in self-custody wallets. These, as is known, are safer than exchange wallets, which continue to be centralized and run the risk of confiscation, as has reported this medium on previous occasions.