Ethereum Declines to $1,750 But Investors Keep Withdrawing ETH to 2015 Low

According to a recent tweet by on-chain data aggregator Santiment, retail investors continue to move their Ethereum holdings from centralized exchanges despite the recent ETH plunge to the $1,780 level.

At the time of this writing, ETH is changing hands at an even lower rate — at $1,746, losing 4.76% within the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap’s website.

Non-exchange ETH holdings reach all-time high

Santiment reported that the amount of Ethereum that remains in exchange-linked addresses has reached 10.1%. This is an all-time low for exchanges and a historic peak for non-exchange wallets.

The last time this was noticed was in 2015, when Ethereum began trading after the ICO a year previously.

This could be an indicator that investors are moving ETH to cold storage vaults and perhaps also sending their ETH to the Ethereum 2.0 staking contract on the Beacon Chain.

On May 9, the amount of staked ETH reached an all-time high of 19,375,242 ETH. The head of the Binance exchange, CZ, posted a bullish tweet, hinting that this may be followed by a price surge. However, instead of that, Ethereum plunged by nearly 5%.

👛 As #Ethereum has dipped to $1,780 today, we’ve seen exchange supply continue to decrease. The percentage of $ETH on exchanges is at its lowest (10.1%) since public trading began in 2015. This is essentially the #AllTimeHigh for non-exchange holdings. https://t.co/WVmeAJhhMM pic.twitter.com/eMXoRh9R76

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) May 11, 2023

This happened after Ethereum jumped to recapture the $2,000 high on May 6. The last time that happened was in the middle of April, and prior to that, on May 31 of last year.

Ethereum follows Bitcoin downward

Ethereum’s price drop followed that of Bitcoin. The flagship cryptocurrency has fallen by 4% since Thursday, losing around $1,000 in 24 hours. The fall has been taking place since May 10; by now, BTC has lost 6.71%, falling from the briefly recaptured $28,000 mark.

On that day, Bitcoin printed a large green hourly candle on the news of a CPI decline. The lower than expected values of the retail inflation index offered the chance that the Fed might halt interest rate hikes, and Bitcoin surged.

However, a sharp price decline followed. Prominent commodity trader Peter Brandt shared yesterday that he spotted a “Head & Shoulders” pattern on the chart which, if completed, promised a big Bitcoin price fall.