Ethereum reached an 11-month high as ETH withdrawals surpassed 1 million tokens
Key Takeaways:
- The successful hard fork of Ethereum has pushed the ETH/USD price above $2,000.
- The upgrade ushers in a new age for Ethereum, allowing users to withdraw their staked ETH and protect and confirm transactions done on the Ethereum network.
- The Shanghai upgrade has resulted in the withdrawal of over one million ETH.
ETH/USD is trading at 2,089.51, up 0.16% in the past day. Ether’s price has increased by over 10% after the Shapella hard fork on April 12. After the Shapella hard fork, more than 1 million Ether worth about $2.1 billion has been withdrawn from Ethereum’s Beacon Chain, and Ether has already surpassed $2,000.
ETH Withdrawals surpassed 1M
The Shapella upgrade set, which includes the Shanghai hard fork, turned live at block height 6209536 on April 12. Ethereum holders were finally able to withdraw their staked ETH after the Shanghai fork became active. It enabled Ethereum holders to withdraw their Ethereum tokens earnings for the very first time after Beacon-chain started taking deposits in late 2020.
Moreover, the total amount of ether withdrawn after Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork has topped one million coins. According to data from the token.unlocks, there has been 1.02 million ether, worth $2.1 billion, withdrawals overall.
The recent Shapella upgrade was not the negative development for Ethereum’s native currency as some had expected. Instead, ETH/USD rates reached an 11-month high.
The asset value has increased significantly in the five days since the Shanghai upgrade, rising by over 10% to trade at over $2,100 on Monday. As a result, Ethereum’s scaling reached an astounding 11-month high.
The Ethereum Staking Program
The Ethereum network underwent the Shanghai hard fork, the protocol’s first big update since “The Merge” in 2022. Its main objective is to enable stakers and validators to withdraw their staked ETH from the Beacon Chain.
Lookonchain, a market intelligence tool, found multiple instances when Ethereum whale stakers withdrew their funds and transferred them to centralized exchanges like Binance, Huobi, and Kraken. However, successful withdrawals following the Shanghai upgrade totaled 158,592 ETH, or almost $333 million.
According to reports, three whale addresses for ETH re-staked their earnings after withdrawal, totaling 19,844 Ether. In contrast, three additional whale addresses submitted 71,444 ETH worth of withdrawn ether to centralized exchanges for liquidation.
Furthermore, on Tuesday, April 17, well-known Chinese cryptocurrency author Colin Wu asserted that the modifications to the shareholders of Huobi Global and Kraken’s regulatory concerns caused the massive withdrawal volume.
According to on-chain statistics, Kraken accounts for 62% of all validators unstaking their tokens. Given the number of legal challenges the exchange is now experiencing in the United States, Kraken’s considerable dominance in unstaking should not be a surprise.
The SEC declared that Kraken’s staking offers were unregistered securities in February. In the end, Kraken was required to reach a settlement with the SEC and pay a $30 million penalty.
