Ethereum (ETH), the biggest altcoin, in its fresh surge breached the much anticipated $4,000 price level on Monday. The major price movement comes in after Bitcoin (BTC) attained its all time high (ATH) of $71,830 with bullish momentum. However, on-chain tracker had caught a suspicious whale transaction amid Ether’s winning run.
Crypto whale looking to dump?
According to WhaleAlert, a crypto whale address moved around 150K Ethereum (approx worth $601 million) in a single transaction. The unknown wallet transferred this big junk of ETH to the crypto exchange Coinbase.
The transaction landed under the suspicion tag as this came in after Ethereum broke out the $4k price level. Traders speculate that a major dump might be coming in as the whale would be looking to sell and book higher profits.
The second biggest crypto already enjoying the bullish sentiment running in the market. ETH price has jumped by more than 60% in the last 30 days. ETH is trading at an average price of $4,048, at the press time. However, it is still trading down by 17% from its ATH of $4,891, recorded on November 16, 2021.
Ethereum’s 24 hour trading volume is up by 86% to stand at $24.4 billion. It is moving close to attaining a market cap of half a trillion now. ETH’s market cap as of now stands at $486.4 billion.
Why ETH is surging?
ETH is adding more and more gains which has led it to a super surge of 77% over the year to date (YTD) basis. The price surge is attributed to the anticipation surrounding Ethereum’s upcoming Dencun upgrade. However, it is also guided by the potential approval of a spot Ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Much hyped Dencun upgrade is seen as the biggest enhancement to the Ethereum network since the merger. It will incorporate various Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). One of the most important EIPs, EIP-4844 will introduce “proto-danksharding”. It is a feature that aims at improving transaction processing efficiency by utilizing blobs.
The mainnet launch for the Dencun upgrade is scheduled for March 13. If EIP-4844 gets an implantation then it will is expected to expedite transactions and reduce costs for layer-2 chains and rollups dependent on Ethereum.
The optimism regarding the SEC’s potential approval of spot Ether ETF applications is also in the air. Meanwhile, recent reports suggest that it might take more time than May 23 to gain an approval from the regulator.
