The Ethereum price moved from trading around $1,190 on January 01 to as high as $1,704 last week. While the pump has been attributed to several factors, whale traders are said to be behind the recent crypto rally. Nonetheless, the highly anticipated Shanghai upgrade that will enable withdrawals of staked ethers is also a huge factor in the recent pump.

However, the bulls have decreased their initial momentum with ETH prices down approximately 2.6 percent in the past 24 hours to trade around $1,632. According to a popularly used indicator, RSI, the Ethereum price could correct further in the coming weeks as a falling divergence appears on an overbought instrument.

Ethereum Price Under Whales Influence

According to the on-chain analytic platform Lookonchain, a mysterious fund with over $10 billion has been making the Ethereum price pump this year.

Reportedly, a series of Ethereum transactions have been identified headed to centralized exchanges like Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase in the past month. Interestingly, every time that the mysterious account made a significant transfer, the underlying Ethereum value spiked.

The reported whale ETH trader has been moving millions of cash from Circle’s USDC to centralized exchanges.

Side Notes

The Ethereum market could face regulatory upheaval from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) should a report by Coinbase Global CEO and Founder Brian Armstrong materializes. Reportedly, the U.S. SEC intends to ban crypto staking for retail customers.

1/ We’re hearing rumors that the SEC would like to get rid of crypto staking in the U.S. for retail customers. I hope that’s not the case as I believe it would be a terrible path for the U.S. if that was allowed to happen.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) February 8, 2023

Notably, the SEC is likely to argue that staking makes crypto projects secure and should be registered under the securities act. Consequently, Cardano’s chief called Ethereum’s staking a problem for the entire crypto industry.

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Qadir AK

Qadir Ak is the founder of Coinpedia. He has over a decade of experience writing about technology and has been covering the blockchain and cryptocurrency space since 2010. He has also interviewed a few prominent experts within the cryptocurrency space.