The Ethereum price is about to revisit last August’s high of slightly above $2000. The recent breakout has rejuvenated Ethereum bulls ahead of the April 12 Shanghai upgrade. Moreover, the upgrade will mark a successful transition from the power-hungry Proof-of-Work (PoW) to the Proof-of-Stake. Already, over 17.9 million Ether have been staked by about 563 validators. Notably, the Ethereum network takes pride in about 57,469,928 holders and over 2,985,081 Ether burned on the beacon chain.
More Staked Ethereum (ETH) at Loss
The upcoming Shanghai Upgrade is expected to enable the withdrawal of staked Ethereum. However, the availability of staked Ethereum will not be released all at once to avoid a market crash. Nevertheless, over 1.1 million Ether, which was awarded to validators in the past two years will be accessible for liquidation on April 12.
According to a recent report conducted by on-chain analytics firm CryptoQuant, the Ethereum sell pressure will be lower than expected after the Shanghai upgrade. Furthermore, CryptoQuant has shown that more than half of the staked ethers are at loss.
The profit and loss analysis by CryptoQuant does not however consider the possibility that Ether could spike high enough and put more validators at a profit, thus instigating increased sell pressure.
Whales On the Hunt
The Ethereum whales have, however, not shied away from stashing more coins in preparation for long-term bullish prospects. Mind you, market intelligence platform Santiment recently noted that Ethereum’s addresses holding 100-10k Ethers have accumulated $4.24 billion worth of coins in the past 9 months. Coupled with the fact that Ethereum balances on centralized exchanges have been on a decline, the Shanghai Upgrade gets even more bullish on a short-term basis.
