The crypto market has recently suffered a significant slowdown due to escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, with several large-cap assets losing their recently accumulated gains over the past week. Specifically, the price of Ethereum fell from over $2,600 to $2,300 at one point during the week.
This represents a new setback for the “king of altcoins”, which has not seen particularly positive performance in recent months. Interestingly, a popular crypto expert on X presented an on-chain observation of Ethereum investor behavior over the past quarter.
How Ethereum Whales Razing Their Holdings Will Impact the Price
In a recent post on social media platform X, crypto analyst Ali Martinez revealed that a particular group of Ethereum whales have razed their holdings in recent months. This on-chain reveal is based on the Mega-Whale Address Count, which tracks the number of addresses holding more than 10,000 units of a particular cryptocurrency.
Whales refer to entities (individuals and organizations) that own significant amounts of a specific cryptocurrency (Ether, in this case). Investors generally pay close attention to the movements of whales, as these large entities tend to exert notable influence over market liquidity and prices due to their large holdings.
Source: Ali_charts/X
According to Martinez, the number of whale addresses holding more than 10,000 ETH has decreased by more than 7% since July 2024. This decline in the population of large Ethereum holders indicates some redistribution or profit taking and suggests a shift notable in market sentiment. particularly with major investors and institutional players.
Interestingly, this reduction in whale addresses coincided with a period when the price of Ethereum was struggling. Despite the approval and launch of spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs), the price of the altcoin fell from over $3,500 in July to $2,200 in August.
As already seen in the token’s price action over the past few months, the decrease in the number of large Ethereum holders could decrease large-scale buying pressure, leading to slow price action. Additionally, the sustained profit-making activities of these whales could potentiate downward pressure on the price of ETH.
ETH Price Overview
At the time of writing, Ethereum price sits just above the 2,400 mark, reflecting an insignificant 0.1% decline over the past 24 hours. The performance of the cryptocurrency in the weekly time frame is not so negligible, as the price of ETH has fallen by almost 10% over the past seven days.
The price of ETH rebounds from $2,300 on the daily timeframe | Source: ETHUSDT chart on TradingView
Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView
