Ethereum on exchanges plummets as we prepare for merge

As a result of record staking statistics on Ethereum 2.0 (the network’s upcoming upgrade, which was recently renamed to “Consensus Layer”), Ethereum (ETH) held on exchanges reached a four-year low yesterday. This comes after record staking figures on Ethereum 1.0.

According to the statistics provided by the analytics platform Glassnode, centralized exchanges presently have 19.09 million Ethereum. This number was slightly less than 20 million in July of 2018, suggesting that Glassnode’s data is accurate.

In addition, the amount of ETH that is now held on exchanges has decreased from 21.191 million by ten percent over the course of the last five days.

These data points were also solidified as a result of the huge outflows that exchanges recently experienced.

According to a research published by Glassnode, the volume of funds leaving centralized exchanges reached its highest level in thirteen months, which may suggest that investors have less interest in trading or holding the asset.

Similar findings were reported by the blockchain tracking and reporting platform Chainalysis, which stated, “The change in ETH held on exchanges experienced the largest one-day decrease in the past 202 days.” This decrease brought the total amount of ETH held on exchanges down to 249.58k from 432.84k.

As the network gets ready for its most significant upgrade to yet, the rapid decrease in the total quantity of Ethereum owned across exchanges is probably due to the increased amount of Ethereum that is being staked.

Ethereum 2.0 is a proof-of-stake (PoS) network, which differs from the Ethereum network that is currently in use. On this network, validators must stake 32 Ethereum in order to certify the network’s integrity.

Additionally, the amount of ETH that is being staked on the Beacon Chain, which is a Proof-of-Stake version of Ethereum that was released in December 2020, has been consistently growing over the last several days.

The Merge is scheduled to take place on September 19, and it is anticipated that this event would see the current mainnet merge with the PoS version. As of right now, the total amount staked is 13.14 million, and there are more than 410,000 distinct validators participating in the process.

During the previous twenty-four hours, the price of ETH increased by 8.6 percent, reaching a high of almost $1,638 before dropping back down.

Over the last week, the value of the second-largest cryptocurrency, which now has a market capitalization of close to $199 billion, has increased by more than 34.5 percent.

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