An unnamed Ethereum whale scooped up $1.7 billion in Ethereum futures contracts in less than an hour, marking the largest hourly volume spike in market orders over the span of 7 months.
The significant purchasing volume was not followed by a surge in short liquidations, indicating that the assets were not severely driven down despite the recent bad performance.
Such a sharp increase in futures trading volume indicates that as traders begin to leverage their holdings through longs, Ethereum’s rebound rally is gaining steam. This is also a precursor of a rally that is gaining momentum.
When the volume of derivatives moves upward, assets often climb more vigorously, and market volatility increases.
Since June 13, when Ethereum’s average daily volatility started to fluctuate around the annual low due to Ether’s continued under-leverage and traders’ lack of willingness to back the second-largest cryptocurrency on the market.
Can Ethereum’s recent rally be attributed to the Merge?
When the date for the Merge network upgrade was made public, ETH experienced a stunning 50 percent increase as investors began to see greater promise in the second-largest cryptocurrency.
Along with the resurrected price performance of ETH, we are also witnessing a steady exodus of miners from the blockchain to alternative currencies, such as Ethereum Classic, which recently experienced a 40% increase as a result of investor optimism that it will eventually take over the hashrate of Ether.
Since “The Merge” rally started on the market, Buterin’s brainchild has outperformed digital gold by approximately 30%, putting ETH ahead of Bitcoin in terms of market performance due to the network’s intrinsic development.