Ethereum (ETH) prices have revisited a key psychological level as they close in on the last market cycle peak.

Ethereum has continued to build on weekend gains during the Monday morning Asian trading session. The asset climbed to $1,412 in a move that has added 20% to its price over the past seven days.

ETH is currently outperforming Bitcoin with a 3.6% gain on the day whereas BTC has dropped half a percent in a fall to $21,253 at the time of press.

Crypto analyst and trader ‘Bluntz’ observed that ETH has reclaimed the 200-week moving average which could signal a bottom.

$eth reclaimed its 200 week moving average this week, #btc will probably next week, the time to be bearish has defo to an end imo pic.twitter.com/HVJ7WBfxLX

— Bluntz (@SmartContracter) July 17, 2022

Momentum has been driven by Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge to proof-of-stake which has now been slated for Sept. 19.

Last week, developers successfully ran another shadow fork to test elements of the Merge involving MEV (maximal extractable value). The final phase of testing on the Goerli testnet has been scheduled for Aug. 11.

On July 18, on-chain analytics firm Glassnode reported that the number of addresses holding more than 32 ETH has reached a 16-month high.

#Ethereum $ETH Number of Addresses Holding 32+ Coins just reached a 16-month high of 116,895Previous 16-month high of 116,864 was observed on 17 July 2022View metric:https://t.co/rkRWanL3OS pic.twitter.com/ZX6sF8z3W7

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) July 18, 2022

32 is the number of tokens required to run a validator node, but with so many exchanges offering staking services, investors can stake with fewer than this.

There is currently 13,089,105 ETH staked according to the Beacon Chain explorer. At current prices, this is worth around $18.3 billion and represents almost 11% of the total circulating supply.