Ethereum Stakers Rush to Exit on Price Pump

ETH has added over $150 billion to its market capitalization in the first two weeks of August, and ETH whales appear to be rushing to unstake their ETH following yesterday’s attempt to break $4,800.

The Ethereum validator queue’s exit line jumped to its second highest level ever today, Aug. 14, with 220,000 ETH requesting to be unstaked over the last three days.

There is currently more than 728,600 ETH, or $3.3 billion, requesting to unstake according to ValidatorQueue, second only to the 743,000 ETH validator exit queue all-time high on July 26, as The Defiant previously reported.

As a result, the wait time to exit ETH validator staking is also quite high at the moment, with a nearly 13 day wait time to unstake ETH. Prior to July 2025, the unstaking queue only reached higher than a one day wait time twice, but has been stuck at over a week for all of August.

ETH staking entry requests have ticked up as well over the last few days, but at a far slower pace. Over the last three days there has been an additional 80,000 ETH, or $360 million, being staked to ETH validators.

While the unstaking numbers are hefty, total active validators on Ethereum are still hovering at all-time highs, with more than 1 million active validators, a 20% increase since the start of 2024.

ETH’s price charge is being spurred on by a revitalized institutional bid, led by Tom Lee’s BitMine, which just filed to raise its total ETH treasury target by another $20 billion.