With ETH briefly dipping below $2,400 this morning, the ETH/BTC ratio has also hit a new 3.5-year low, falling below 0.037, reaching as low as 0.03623. At the time of writing, it has slightly rebounded and is currently trading at 0.03685.
A Whale Transfers Over 50 Million USD Worth of ETH to Exchanges
The continuous decline in the ETH/BTC ratio seems to have finally broken the resolve of the largest long ETH/BTC position holder, James Fickel, who is now attempting to accelerate his exit.
According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin, James Fickel has sold 2,000 ETH for three consecutive days, converting them to WBTC to reduce his Aave borrowing position. In the early hours of today, he also redeemed 26,624 ETH (worth around $67.35 million) from Lido, and transferred 20,000 ETH (worth around $50.63 million) to Coinbase Prime, seemingly preparing for a sale.
According to Yu Jin's calculations, this long ETH/BTC whale may have incurred losses in the tens of millions of dollars.
Vitalik Declares: The Ticker is ETH
Perhaps seeing Ethereum's recent lackluster performance, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin made a rare public statement in support of Ether, simply responding "the ticker is ETH", which received over 676,000 views and 5,400 likes.
This response has prompted many KOLs to leave comments like "send it" and "LFG", stoking FOMO sentiment.
ETH Has Only Risen 8% Since the Beginning of the Year
Just how weak has Ethereum been lately? CoinGecko data shows that ETH is currently trading at $2,463.13, down 2.8% in the last 24 hours, and has only risen about 8% since the beginning of the year, far behind Bitcoin's 58.7% gain.
Well-known DeFi analyst Ignas also joked that holding Ether is "the most excruciating pain known to humanity", equating it to kidney stones, childbirth, cluster headaches, and trigeminal neuralgia, to describe the psychological anguish of holding Ether.