Ethereum had been one of the largest winners of the rally that rocked the crypto market last week. The network had seen a boost when one of the developers of Ethereum announced that the upcoming Merge would likely happen sometime in September. It triggered a ripple effect that spread to the other digital assets in the space. But it seems Ethereum investors are nowhere close to being done, given the on-chain metrics from the last week.
In the last week, large and small Ethereum investors alike have been ramping up in terms of accumulation. This shines through in the among of ETH that was recorded, leaving centralized exchanges versus the number that was going into them. The disparity between the two is stark and shows exactly how investors are feeling when it comes to investing in ETH.
This shows that investors are accumulating by moving their ETH out of exchanges and presumably to personal wallets for safekeeping. It also points to long-term hold sentiment among these investors. Additionally, it means that the sell pressure that has weighed down the market over the last couple of weeks has begun to ease. In its place is now a high buying pressure, leaving investors to accumulate as much ETH as possible.
The majority of the gains recorded by Ethereum over the last week have been attributed to the updates made about the upcoming Merge. Ethereum had gained more than 40% on the back of that announcement alone, but the price has not been the only thing affected by the announcement.
This means that more than $20 billion in ETH is now being held in the ETH 2.0 deposit contract. Now, this is not the highest point it has been in terms of dollar value, but it is nonetheless significant given that the price of ETH is down more than 70% from its ATH.
