After the crypto-friendly Trump was elected and the uncertainty of the presidential election was eliminated, the cryptocurrency market is celebrating, with Ethereum surging beyond Bitcoin. According to data from the Binance spot market, Ethereum was only around $2,600 when Bitcoin broke through $75,000 the previous day (6th); and when Bitcoin reached a new high of $76,400 in the early hours, Ethereum was only approaching $2,700.
However, while Bitcoin's rally subsequently stalled, Ethereum continued to surge strongly, reaching a high of $2,837.2 around 9:30 am this morning, currently trading at $2,817.33, up over 13.18% in the past 24 hours.
This has reversed the declining ETH/BTC ratio, which is currently at 0.03729, up 3.55% in the past 24 hours.
Whales Dump During the Surge
As the representative of Altcoins, Ethereum has seen a rare and substantial surge, and with Bitcoin's market dominance above 60%, the market is full of expectations for the arrival of the "Altcoin season".
However, ancient whales have started to dump their holdings. According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, an address that accumulated 11,004.9 ETH at $3.45 per coin 8 years ago, has ended its long-term hibernation and started to sell these ETH in large quantities. From 8 am this morning, this whale has sold 8,699 ETH within two hours, converting them into 24.03 million USDC, at an average price of $2,762.
Furthermore, according to Ai Yi's monitoring, an Ethereum ICO whale holding 150,000 ETH is suspected to have sold 15,000 ETH, worth about $39.38 million, on the previous day (6th). Since September 22nd, this whale has cumulatively sold 65,000 ETH, worth about $164 million.
While the whale dumping does not mean Ethereum cannot rise further, the market is concerned that the current Ethereum price may have reached a short-term high as the whales continue to deleverage.
Potential Catalysts for Ethereum
Looking ahead to Ethereum's prospects, one of the most anticipated short-term positive catalysts is the Pectra upgrade. This upgrade includes updates to the execution layer (Prague) and the consensus layer (Electra), expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2025.
DeFi analyst points out that the key updates in the Pectra upgrade include:
- Account abstraction: Simplifying the wallet management process, significantly improving the user experience;
- Staking optimization: Providing more flexible options for stakers with smaller capital;
- Scalability enhancement: Expanding the blob capacity to 2-3 times the original.
Regarding the criticism that the development of L2 has led to a decline in mainnet revenue and caused ETH inflation, 21Shares' vice president Federico Brokate stated that there is no need to worry. He believes this is similar to Amazon's consecutive quarterly losses in the 1990s. He believes that Ethereum, through its L2 scaling strategy, is attracting millions of new users at low cost, and the fees generated by L2 will eventually become "large enough" to restore Ethereum's mainnet revenue to pre-Dencun upgrade levels.
The Ethereum ecosystem has a top-tier development team and constantly emerging innovative technologies, maintaining a leading position in the DeFi field. Particularly in the current popular application narratives, the development prospects of RWA are considered huge, and the main scenarios of this application are concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet. In addition, the Ethereum Foundation recruited 5 full-time researchers in mid-October, focusing on exploring "emerging applications" on Ethereum, which is also part of the market's expectations.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has also continued to share his insights on the technical roadmap. He recently shared the goals and implementation methods for the Merge, Surge, Scourge, Verge, Purge, and Splurge stages, which will have a profound impact on Ethereum's future. Particularly in the Surge stage, he emphasized that the collaboration between L1 and L2 will enable Ethereum to achieve 100,000 transactions per second, integrate into a unified ecosystem, and further enhance the processing capacity of the mainnet.
