Ethereum price has significantly underperformed in the recent past compared to Bitcoin as whale investors prefer the latter.
Amid the ongoing crypto market rebound fueled by the upcoming October bullish narrative, Ethereum ETH $2 974 24h volatility: 1.7% Market cap: $358.77 B Vol. 24h: $38.79 B , the largest altcoin with a valuation of over $318 billion, has lacked significant upside momentum. The large-cap altcoin registered more losses in the August crypto selloff compared to Bitcoin BTC $116 748 24h volatility: 4.6% Market cap: $2.32 T Vol. 24h: $70.83 B price but has not recorded a higher rebound in the past three weeks.
According to the latest market data, Ethereum price has rallied around 11 percent in the past two weeks, while Bitcoin price registered nearly 13 percent in the same period. Despite consistently closing above the 50-day Moving Average (MA), Ether’s price is not yet out of the woods and could retrace to the support level of around $2,250 in the near term before rebounding towards its all-time high.
From a technical standpoint, unless Ether’s price rallies above July’s peak of about $3,566 in the coming weeks, the macro falling trend that began in March might push the altcoin below $2K.
Nonetheless, the October crypto bullish narrative, coupled with the shifting global economic outlook amid the upcoming US 2024 election, could prevent further bleeding. As a result, ETH price could rally toward its all-time high in the near term.
Ethereum Suffers Low Demand from Whale Investors
In comparison to Bitcoin, the demand for Ethereum has remained relatively low since the approval of spot Ether ETFs in the United States. According to the latest market data, the US spot Ether ETFs have registered a net cash outflow of about $581 million since the historic approval earlier this year.
On Thursday, the US spot Ether ETF registered a net cash outflow of about $0.6 million, led by Grayscale’s ETHE. As of this report, the US spot Ether ETFs had a total of $7.2 billion in assets under management, with BlackRock’s ETHA and Fidelity’s FETH leading in net cash inflows in the recent past.
On the other hand, the US spot Bitcoin ETFs have registered more than $1.4 billion in net cash inflows during the past three weeks. As a result, the supply of Bitcoin on centralized exchanges has dropped by over 90K in the past month to about 2.3 million at the time of this report.
These two major players further moved 12,100 $ETH ($31.7M) to exchanges in the past 24 hours!
In total, they have unloaded 20,610 $ETH ($53.6M) over the last 3 days, including:
👉 Ethereum ICO whale “0xb8c” sent 8,510 $ETH ($22.15M) to #Kraken after 3 months of inactivity,… https://t.co/1EUhugqv5O pic.twitter.com/PbHNHj7SyL
— Spot On Chain (@spotonchain) September 26, 2024
Meanwhile, on-chain data shows that two major whale investors deposited 12k ETH, worth over $31 million in the past 24 hours, into different exchanges. As a result, the overall Ether supply on centralized exchanges has increased by about 157k in the past 30 days, thus weighing down on the overall bullish sentiment.
Bigger Picture
The Ethereum network remains the undisputed leader in the web3 ecosystem, with a total value locked of about $49 billion and a stablecoins supply of over $85 billion. However, the Ethereum network has faced immense competition from other layer one chains – led by Solana SOL $159.1 24h volatility: 4.3% Market cap: $85.18 B Vol. 24h: $10.65 B , Tron TRX $0.30 24h volatility: 1.6% Market cap: $28.27 B Vol. 24h: $2.62 B , Toncoin TON $2.97 24h volatility: 1.8% Market cap: $7.32 B Vol. 24h: $280.76 M , and BSC, among others – due to the lower transactions fees and high throughput offered.
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