Following the election of crypto-friendly Trump and the elimination of uncertainty in the presidential election, cryptocurrencies entered a celebratory market, with Ethereum rising above Bitcoin for the first time in a while. According to Binance spot market data, Ethereum was only at $2,600 when Bitcoin broke through $75,000 yesterday (6); and when Bitcoin hit an all-time high of $76,400 around 4 AM, Ethereum was only close to $2,700.
However, while Bitcoin's subsequent rise paused, Ethereum continued to surge, reaching a high of $2837.2 around 9:30 AM today, now reported at $2817.33, up over 13.18% in the last 24 hours.
This has reversed the continuing new low of the ETH/BTC ratio, which is currently reported at 0.03729, up 3.55% in the last 24 hours.
The giant whale offloads during a surge
As a representative of altcoins, Ethereum has seen a significant rise not seen in a long time, coupled with Bitcoin's market share being over 60%, the market is full of anticipation for the arrival of 'altcoin season'.
However, the ancient giant whale started to offload at this time. According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring this morning, one address that accumulated 11,004.9 ETH at a price of $3.45 per coin 8 years ago has ended its long dormancy and started to sell a large amount of this ETH. Since 8 AM, this giant whale has sold 8,699 ETH in two hours, exchanging it for 24.03 million USDC, with an average selling price of $2,762.
Moreover, according to Ai Yi's monitoring, a giant whale that held 150,000 ETH from the Ethereum ICO allegedly sold 15,000 ETH yesterday (6), valued at approximately 39.38 million USD. Since September 22, this whale has cumulatively sold 65,000 ETH, valued at about 164 million USD.
Although the whale's sell-off does not mean that Ethereum cannot rise, there are concerns in the market about whether the current Ethereum price has reached a short-term peak as whales continue to reduce their holdings.
Potential catalysts for Ethereum
Looking ahead to the prospects of Ethereum, one of the most anticipated short-term positives in the market is the Pectra upgrade. This upgrade includes the Prague (execution layer) and Electra (consensus layer) updates, expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
DeFi analysts point out that important updates in the Pectra upgrade include:
Account abstraction: Simplifying wallet management processes and significantly enhancing user experience;
Staking optimization: Providing more flexible options for smaller stakers;
Scalability enhancement: Expanding blob capacity to 2-3 times the original.
In response to criticisms that the development of L2 has led to a decline in mainnet revenue and inflation of ETH, Federico Brokate, Vice President of 21Shares, stated that there is no need for concern. He believes this is similar to Amazon experiencing losses for several consecutive quarters in the 1990s. He thinks Ethereum is attracting millions of new users at a low cost through its L2 scaling strategy, and ultimately the fees obtained from L2 will become 'large enough' to restore Ethereum's mainnet revenue to levels before the Dencun upgrade.
The Ethereum ecosystem has top-notch development teams and continuously launched innovative technologies, maintaining a dominant position in the DeFi field. Particularly in the current popular application narrative, the development prospects of RWA are considered enormous, and the main scenarios of this application are also concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet. Additionally, the Ethereum Foundation hired 5 full-time researchers in mid-October, focusing on exploring 'emerging applications' on Ethereum, which is also part of market expectations.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin continues to express insights on the technical roadmap. He recently shared goals and implementation methods for the Merge, Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge phases, which will have a profound impact on Ethereum's future. Particularly in the Surge phase, he emphasized that the collaboration between L1 and L2 will allow Ethereum to achieve 100,000 transactions per second, integrated into a unified ecosystem, and further enhance the mainnet's processing capability.
