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Ethereum Supply Hits Lowest In 8 Years, Only 10% Remains

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Ethereum’s supply on exchanges has dwindled, hitting an all-time low since it sprung into public existence in 2015. Investors scrambled to secure the asset, leaving only 10.3% of the current ETH on exchanges, as shown by Santiment.

This means ETH is being held in self-custody. In retrospect, the trend also indicates hodlers’ confidence.

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Ethereum Supply Hits Lowest In 8 Years, Only 10% Remains 3

This comes amidst CFTC’s civil complaint against Binance on March 27 where the regulator termed Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin as Commodities.

While Binance has vowed to come back with a full response to CFTC allegations, one cannot help but notice how regulators are not on the same footing over the classification of ETH.

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Ethereum Supply Hits Lowest In 8 Years, Only 10% Remains 4

Weeks before CFTC leveled charges against Binance, another leading crypto exchange Kraken was forced to shut down its staking services by the SEC which labeled Ethereum as a security.

United States Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] chair Gary Gensler has steadfastly maintained that Ether is likely a security under U.S. law.

His comments shortly came after Ethereum completed “The Merge,” its shift to a proof-of-stake [PoS] transaction processing algorithm, last Sept.

Ethereum Commodity Or Security?

Without naming the asset directly, Gensler in a Senate Banking Committee told that digital asset exchanges and other online providers who offer PoS blockchain “staking services” act like lenders. 

“From the coin’s perspective…that’s another indicia that under the Howey Test, the investing public is anticipating profits based on the efforts of others,” Gensler stated to the Wall Street Journal.

On the other hand, CFTC, in a court filing on 13 December 2022, insisted on calling ETH a commodity.

Post FTX, the regulatory body stated, “Certain digital assets are ‘commodities,’ including Bitcoin [BTC], Ether [ETH], Tether [USDT] and others, as defined under Section 1a(9) of the Act, 7 U.S.C. § 1a(9).”

As regulatory bodies grapple over the asset’s classification, the co-founder of Ethereum, Joseph Lubin, criticized authorities for comparing the ether to security and claimed that it was more comparable to a commodity like oil.

During a recent interview with CNBC, Lubin said he was “very confident” ether was not a security.

If it were treated as such, ether would need to be registered with regulators and subjected to much stricter requirements around pre-clearance and reporting. “Anyone can say anything, it doesn’t make it true,” Lubin told CNBC.

$1B Ethereum Gone “Forever”; Here’s How

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Ethereum tokens worth more than $1 billion have been trapped for eternity on account of typos, user errors, and buggy contracts.

This has been revealed by Coinbase’s director of product strategy and business operations, Conor Grogan.

I’ve categorized thousands of instances of Ethereum typos, user errors, and buggy contracts Thus far I’ve found 636,000 ETH worth $1.15B+ that are lost forever: 0.5% of all circulating supply Crypto can be hard sometimes. On the flip side, that’s a lot of ETH that cant be sold.

Among the reasons for the trapped tokens include the Parity Multisig wallet bug, which caused the crypto exchange Quadriga to lose 60K tokens [$108 million] owing to a flawed contract.

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$1B Ethereum Gone "Forever"; Here's How 6

In addition, a flawed smart contract rendered $34 million worth of Ethereum permanently inaccessible during Aku Dreams’ much-hyped NFT launch Akutars, a year ago.

Aku Dreams is a 3D avatar NFT collection based on the original character Aku by Micah Johnson, the Major League Baseball player.

Also, there was another incident where “people have collectively sent 24k ETH to a burn address for some reason”. So, in total, Web3 foundation lost 306K ETH which is valued at over $530 million, Grogan added.

To recall, in Jan 2022, a Reddit user who wished to remain anonymous [now-deleted post] was said to have lost close to $500k after sending wrapped Ether [wETH] into a wETH wrapping smart contract.

Typically, users first send ETH to the wETH smart contract address in order to wrap it, and they will then receive an equivalent token in return.

To unwrap it, users must either use the withdrawal function in the wETH smart contract or exchange wETH for ETH on a decentralized exchange like Uniswap.

Here, the anonymous Reddit user transferred the wETH directly into the wETH smart contract address instead, in a bid to receive ETH back.

Actual Lost Figure Of Ethereum Tokens Could Be Much Higher

Unfortunately, this procedure is the equivalent of “token burning,” and it led to the trader’s crypto being lost forever.

Having said that, Coinbase’s Grogan also cautioned that the previously cited figure significantly underestimates the actual amount of lost or inaccessible ETH.

This is because it only accounts for situations in which Ethereum is permanently locked and ignores lost private keys or forgotten wallets, such as the infamous Genesis wallets.

Ethereum Primed For $2K As Price Reaches 7-Month High: Report

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Ethereum’s value has surpassed the $1800 range, last seen in Aug 2022. However, this 7-month price high did not translate into significant transaction obstacles as a result of excessive demand.

According to Santiment, this opens the door for a potential path to $2k and above. Further analysis revealed that ETH fees have fallen below $2 per transaction even after the price pump.

In the chart provided by the analytics platform, on March 19, gas fees dropped to $1.75 compared to $8.12 on March 11 when ETH’s price bottomed.

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Ethereum Primed For $2K As Price Reaches 7-Month High: Report 8

Santiment came to the conclusion that a price rally is imminent due to the absence of notable transaction barriers that are typical in times of high demand for an asset.

After a prolonged spell of a downtrend, ETH broke out on March 10, and the altcoin has been off to an impressive start ever since, leading to a sharp increase in its value.

Once it passed the $1,800 threshold, the leading altcoin rekindled bullish views and secured a large price increase.

But, the gains were shortlived because 18,657 ETH, or $33,130,425, according to market statistics, was transferred recently to the Binance exchange, worrying investors.

The move raised concerns about a potential sell-off, leaving the largest altcoin by market cap vulnerable to a decrease in value.

Ethereum Investors Brace For A Sell-Off

Normally, a whale’s movement of coins might convey its attitude regarding an asset. For instance, if a whale sells a large amount of Ethereum, it means that either they believe the asset’s price has peaked or that they no longer trust in its future potential.

The majority of investors, who are small-scale investors, might experience anxiety as a result, which might drive the price even lower.

On March 18, a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain was made with a transaction cost of just $1 from an unidentified wallet that is thought to belong to a wealthy whale.

Ethereum’s price fell by 2.53% from its previously reported value of $1,807 as a result of this transaction, according to statistics from cryptocurrency market tracker Coinmarketcap.

At the time of writing this post, ETH is exchanging hands at $1783, with a marginal increase in the last 24 hours.

That said, Ethereum’s core developers have set April 12 as the target date for the eagerly anticipated Shanghai hard fork.

The deadline- 10:27:35 UTC on April 12, epoch 620,9536 will be formally announced by developers on GitHub, TronWeekly reported.

Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade Has Now A Target Date Of April 12

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The long-awaited Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork now has a target date of April 12, thanks to its core developers.

The deadline- 10:27:35 UTC on April 12, epoch 620,9536 will be formally announced by developers on GitHub.

The Shanghai upgrade will ultimately allow validators to withdraw their staked ether as well as any incentives received from adding or approving blocks to the blockchain, transforming Ethereum’s entire shift to a proof-of-stake [PoS] network.

Not long ago, ETH’s last test run for the Shanghai upgrade- the Shapella hard fork was executed on the Goerli testnet, paving the way for staked ETH withdrawals.

For Shapella to be forked onto the Goerli testnet , it required 15 epochs, “terence.eth” stated since network participation was below the two-thirds threshold then:

Moreover, the final dress rehearsal encountered some issues. As reported by TronWeekly, there was a delay in the deposit process as several testnet validators did not update their client software prior to the Goerli fork.

Another developer of the Ethereum foundation Parithosh Jayanthi noted that once the issues with the validators running older versions of clients were fixed, the attestation rate increased and is at the moment finalizing.

Five Ethereum Improvement Proposals are included in the Shanghai mainnet upgrade, including EIP-4985, which would allow staked Ether withdrawals on the Beacon Chain and complete Ethereum’s switch from a proof-of-work [PoW] consensus to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus.

Due to its resemblance to bond interest payments, ETH’s switch to a PoS consensus where investors can “stake” their tokens in exchange for incentives has caught the attention of regulators.

Staking Ethereum Has Placed It Under Regulators Scanner

A new accusation from a New York state regulator has revived the legal discussion after SEC head Gensler proposed ETH be securities.

KuCoin, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Seychelles, is being sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James on March 9 for allegedly breaking the law by selling unregistered securities. Ether was named in the lawsuit as one of the unregistered securities.

State and federal agencies, like as the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, have long regarded Ethereum as a commodity.

The crypto market would be greatly affected by its designation as a security, which would fundamentally alter how [and whether] the asset and others like it are traded in the United States.

Final Test Run For Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade Completes

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Ethereum’s last test run for the Shanghai upgrade- the Shapella hard fork has been executed on the Goerli testnet, paving the way for staked ETH withdrawals.

This was announced by the ETH core developer Tim Beiko apprising the fork while also pointing out issues that came with it.

Beiko observed that several testnet validators did not update their client software prior to the Goerli fork, which caused a delay in the deposit process.

This again has its own challenge as there is “less incentive to run a validator/monitor it”, given that the Goerli ETH “is worthless”.

However, he still expects validators to make the necessary adjustments ahead of the fork on the mainnet.

Another developer of the Ethereum foundation Parithosh Jayanthi noted that once the issues with the validators running older versions of clients were fixed, the attestation rate increased and is at the moment finalizing.

“Mainnet comes next”, he exclaimed.

Also, for Shapella to be forked onto the Goerli testnet , it required 15 epochs, “terence.eth” stated since network participation was below the two-thirds threshold:

The final mainnet of the Shapella fork is expected to take place in early April following a few delays in preparing the Sepolia and Goerli testnets for the fork.

The Shanghai upgrade will ultimately allow validators to withdraw their staked ether as well as any incentives received from adding or approving blocks to the blockchain, transforming Ethereum’s entire shift to a proof-of-stake [PoS] network.

Ethereum’s Goerli Was The Last Of The Three Testnets

It needs to be told that Goerli was the most anticipated because it was the last of three testnets to run through such a simulation.

Also, Goerli was the final chance for staking providers to verify that staked ETH withdrawals would be handled correctly prior to the update going live.

In addition, this test has the most validators and closely mimics the activity on the Ethereum blockchain.

Before any changes are made to the mainnet, developers can repair any bugs on testnets, which imitate the main blockchain.

As reported by TronWeekly, on the client side of the consensus layer, the upgrade is referred to as Capella, while the fork is referred to as Shanghai on the client side of the execution layer.

The name “Shapella” have been derived from the combination of Shanghai, the location of Devcon 2, and Capella, the brightest star in the northern constellation of Auriga.

The ability for validators to return their staked Ether [stETH] from the Beacon Chain to the execution layer is one of the significant changes.

Ethereum Whales Adds $600M ETH In Recent Market Dip

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Large-scale Ethereum holders have been covertly adding 400k ETH tokens, each worth over $600 million, to their portfolios despite the current market downturn.

Last week, the crypto market was rocked by the events of the collapse of Silver Valley bank and Silvergate Capital, sending Bitcoin, Ethereum, and USDC prices to utter chaos.

The price of both the tokens has recovered much of its losses incurred last weekend after the U.S. government intervened to stop a potential banking crisis from spreading, while Circle’s USDC stablecoin has reclaimed its dollar peg.

Amidst all these, whales holding between 1,000 to 10,000 Eth units seemed unperturbed by the market turbulence, and continued their accumulation spree, as noted by crypto analyst @Ali_charts.

It is believed that this acquisition, played a key role in the current increase in Ethereum’s price.

At the time of writing this post, Ethereum is up by over 6% in the last 24 hours and over 8% in the weekly index. The 2nd ranked crypto is exchanging hands at $1689, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Meanwhile, the ETH community has another reason to rejoice as the ecosystem is edging closer to its latest milestone.

The latest significant upgrade to the smart contract blockchain protocol will enable Ethereum’s Beacon Chain to accept withdrawals of ether.

Ethereum Inches Closer To Its Latest Milestone

The soon-to-be-launched modifications would include two updates that would happen simultaneously and be combined to cover every aspect of the upgrade.

Shanghai alludes to changes made to Ethereum’s execution layer, primarily making it possible to deposit staked ETH to execution layer wallets. The Beacon Chain, now known as Capella, must adapt concurrently with the Shanghai hard fork.

Explaining more on the combined upgrades at the execution and consensus layers, Justin Florentine, a staff protocol engineer for Hyperledger Besu at ConsenSys, said,

“It is doubly named because it is the first simultaneous upgrade of ETH’s execution layer and consensus layer, and is highly anticipated because it will enable staked ETH withdrawals.”

The highly anticipated Shanghai upgrade is slated to go live on the Ethereum mainnet in early April. The Shapella upgrade was completed on March 14 on the Goerli test network, which enables development testing prior to mainnet deployments, pushing the original timeframe from March 2023.

Ethereum Supply Dwindle By $40M Since Merge

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While Ethereum’s prices regain bullish momentum, its issuance or supply has fallen by 23,948 ETH worth nearly $40 million since the Merge, data from UltraSound.Money showed.

The world no 2 crypto has a current circulating supply of 120.49 million. Moreover, the supply growth is negative 0.7% per year with 1,556K ETH burnt on a daily basis.

The last 6 months post-merge have seen a constant decline in exchange supply. For those new, the Eth network transitioned from a proof-of-work [PoW] to a proof-of-stake [PoS] network in an event called the Merge in Sept 2022.

As per a recent report shared by leading on-chain data analytics firm Santiment, the amount of available ETH sitting on exchanges has registered a steep decline.

In fact, ETH in exchanges has shrunk by 37% which technically indicates a bullish movement on the coin’s value as there is less ETH available to trade or sell.

There were a total of 19.12 million ETH, valued at $31.3 billion, on exchanges before the September merging. In the second week of February, there were 13.36 million ETH, valued at $19.7 billion.

Besides the constant depletion in ETH supply held on exchanges, the asset’s overall market supply has also tanked since it turned deflationary post-London upgrade. The deflationary model is based on the fee-burning mechanism made available by Ethereum Improvement Proposal [EIP]-1559.

With the Shanghai upgrade soon, a sizable percentage of the ETH supply has shifted into self-custody, and many traders also favor staking.

Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade

March will see the launch of Shanghai, the next Ethereum update. Stakeholders and validators will be able to remove their holdings from the Beacon Chain during the hard fork, which will also incorporate more suggestions for network improvements.

At present, 16 million ETH, or 14% of the total supply, is staked on the Beacon Chain, amounting to approximately $25 billion at current prices — a considerable amount that will gradually become liquid after the Shanghai hard fork.

Ethereum’s price briefly touched $1,700 before retracing back to trade at $1681, at press time.

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has increased by more than 7% in the last 24 hours as it approaches a multi-month high, but strong resistance is present at this point.

Ban On Ethereum Staking Would Be “Terrible”-Coinbase CEO

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Crypto staking, such as Ethereum 2.0, faces an uncertain future as rumors about imposing potential restrictions on retail customers by the SEC have been circulating.

CEO of crypto exchange Coinbase Brian Armstrong poured his thoughts on the same. In the series of tweets, the top exec expressed concern about the reports as he believe it would be a terrible path for the U.S. if allowed to happen.

Staking, as per Armstrong, is an important crypto innovation that allows users to participate directly in running open crypto networks.

Staking brings many positive improvements to the space, including scalability, increased security, and reduced carbon footprints. We need to make sure that new technologies are encouraged to grow in the US, and not stifled by a lack of clear rules.

The top exec then said that regulation by enforcement would encourage firms to operate offshore, citing the example of FTX.

That said, the speculations are not without foundation as Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC previously warned that Ethereum’s upgrade could mean the cryptocurrency becomes regulated as a security that sparked a price sell-off.

Gensler’s remarks came during Ethereum’s Merge upgrade where it officially transitioned to a proof-of-stake system.

This arrangement where Ethereum’s proof-of-stake, allowed holders to lock up their coins to earn a return, has caught SEC’s attention to regulating Ethereum as a security.

Ethereum’s Staking Model Drew SEC’s Attention

In a Senate banking committee meeting held last year, SEC chair Gary Gensler initially stated the following, while adding that he is not referring to any specific crypto.

“From the coin’s perspective…that’s another indicia that under the Howey test, the investing public is anticipating profits based on the efforts of others, ” as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

In accordance with the Howey test, security is defined as an “investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits to be derived from the efforts of others.”

This would be then subjected to disclosure and registration requirements.

But what followed next dashed hope for Coinbase and other crypto exchanges, when the SEC head said any crypto trading platform offering staking services to users “look very similar with some changes of labeling to lending.”

Additionally, Gensler reaffirmed his belief that almost all crypto assets are securities and once more urged crypto firms to register with the SEC.

Ethereum Breaks Above $1700 But There’s A Catch

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For the first time since Sept. 12, Ethereum surged above $1700 before recoiling back to $1640, at press time. The second biggest crypto by market cap kickstarted 2023 on an impressive note, with a 40% rise to date.

Following the FTX saga and the prolonged bear market of 2022, the leading altcoin has been able to recoup the losses suffered during the events in just a span of 30 days.

Also, since the beginning of February, ETH has experienced the highest percentage of profitable transactions in the previous two years.

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Ethereum Breaks Above $1700 But There's A Catch 10

Investors are unsure whether the price rally would continue its momentum even as profit-taking has increased, Santiment noted.

For one, Ethereum repeatedly failed to overcome the $1,680 resistance and the accompanying negative news circulation might bear the ability to destroy the bullish triangle pattern.

Investors are opting for defensive positioning ahead of the upcoming Shanghai upgrade.

Ethereum’s highly anticipated hard fork, which is expected to launch in March, will allow the withdrawals of over 17 million ETH staked or deposited in the Beacon Chain since Dec 2020.

Only 43,200 ETH can be unstaked each day, even though the 17.26 million total staking amount cannot be removed on the day of the update.

Ethereum’s Shanghai Fork Might Trigger Sell-Offs

However, the total staking reward of the past two years, which amounts to roughly 1 million ETH, can be withdrawn instantly.

Since the entire stack is now withdrawable, holders may rush to exchanges to sell their ETH as soon as the floodgates open, potentially driving down the price. This has raised concerns among traders.

On the positive side of things, a developer for the Ethereum Foundation announced the launch of “Zhejiang” public testnet on February 1.

In order to help validators prepare for the Shanghai hard fork, the implementation will permit staked Ether withdrawal in a test environment.

Additionally. it would replace the Shandong testnet because when the latter was launched, it included several EIPs that will not be rolled out with the upgrade.

The Zhejiang testnet, in the opinion of one ETH developer named Paritosh, is a good opportunity for all users to test out how they intend to gather, present, and use the withdrawal information.

Bitcoin & Ethereum Sink Amidst FED Interest Rate Hikes

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Bitcoin and Ethereum experienced slight declines in anticipation of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates in its upcoming meeting.

At the time of writing this post, Bitcoin, the largest crypto asset by market cap is exchanging hands at $22,934, which fell by over 2% in the past 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap.

Ethereum, the second biggest cryptocurrency, has fallen by 2% to trade at $1,573 at press time. 

The Federal Reserve’s policy meeting this week, where the top bank is scheduled to announce its eighth consecutive rate hike, is one of the most eagerly awaited events.

As reported by CNBC, Fed officials are expected to approve a 0.25 percentage point hike this time around as inflation begins to decline, a more moderate pace than the previous super-sized movements in 2022.

“The good news is that the worst is over,” stated Yiming Ma, an assistant professor of finance at Columbia University Business School.

The U.S. central bank is now knee-deep in a rate hike cycle that has raised its benchmark rate by 4.25 percentage points in less than a year.

Although inflation is still above the Fed’s 2% long-term target, pricing pressures have “come down substantially and the pace of rate hikes is going to slow,” Ma said.

As for the world’s dominant crypto, Bitcoin witnessed its best month in over a year, tapping a five-month high of $23k recently.

Its YTD price has also been impressive, registering over a 43% surge, the strongest monthly performance since October 2021, according to a recent Glassnode research report.

Bitcoin’s “Impressive” YTD Performance Could Get Invalidated Due To This

The on-chain analysis indicated that Bitcoin’s surge has been propelled by historical spot demand and a string of short squeezes, which have helped the market turn a profit and create a robust contango in futures trading.

In addition to that, Exchange outflows in the wake of FTX have been neutralized by newly motivated inflows, which have tempered the initial impulse.

Three waves of short futures contracts totaling more than $495 million have been liquidated, with the initial short squeeze in mid-January catching many traders off guard, TronWeekly reported.

However, despite the promising signs, the overall crypto industry could face a major setback with the Fed introducing more hawkish measures impacting the traditional and cryptocurrency markets. 

This was corroborated by Michael J. Kramer – founder of Mott Capital in his report released on January 29 where he suggested that the FED needs to “push back against the market before it’s too late.”