Ethereum balance on cryptocurrency exchanges breaks 15-month low – 1.2 million ETH were withdrawn from exchanges

Ethereum yesterday, January 25, set a new all-time high. At the beginning of the day, the price of one coin was $ 1,476. Some analysts claim that the cost will continue to grow and reach $ 2,600 per coin, while others predict that the level of $ 10,000 will be broken. Meanwhile, the balance of ETH on cryptocurrency exchanges got down to the minimum value in the last 15 months.

Over the past week, approximately 1.2 million ETH were withdrawn from the exchanges, which is equivalent to almost $ 1.6 billion. Analysts believe the cryptocurrency has been moved to DeFi protocols and blocked from staking in Ethereum 2.0.

The withdrawal of cryptoassets began on January 19, 2021. At that time, there were 16.6 million ETH on the exchanges. By the end of the week, the balance decreased to 15.4 million ETH or $ 20.5 billion. Most of the 1.2 million ETH went to anonymous wallets. According to analyst Pedro Febrero, there can be three reasons for this user behavior.

The first is the start of blocking Ethereum in DeFi protocols. True, according to the DeFi Pulse data, the number of blocked coins on Tuesday, January 19, decreased from 7 million to 6.9 million, and the next day it again increased to 7 million.

The second is the accumulation of Ethereum by Gryscale investors. But at the same time, data from the BYBT website tells us that the company did not purchase cryptocurrency for public trusts.

The third reason is that the number of coins blocked for staking in ETH 2.0 has more than quadrupled (320%) since December last year. On January 19, 170,000 coins were blocked in ETH 2.0. The next day, their number increased by another 200,000 coins.

The withdrawal of Ethereum from major cryptocurrency exchanges means that the value of the digital currency will continue to rise, Febrero said. With a decrease in the number of coins on exchanges, the likelihood of an increase in the value of Ethereum will increase.