ETH continued to trade below the significant $2,000 despite a bullish week’s finale. Fed Fear and regulatory headwinds continue to be obstacles. On April 12, 2023, Ethereum will undergo a hard fork known as Shanghai, which would upgrade the protocol to Shapella. With this upgrade, the Ethereum network will see a number of enhancements, including the Shanghai and Capella Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs).
According to a recent poll by OKX exchange, 83% of respondents who are part of the ETH community are certain that Ethereum staking would increase over the next three months.
The unlocking of the ETH token could temporarily put pressure on the altcoin’s price, according to experts across the industry. However, ETH bulls are yet to react to the big event and even the social sentiment needs to catch pace.
Social sentiment remains unchanged
After recapturing an 8-month high, Ethereum’s sentiment has mainly remained negative. When 13 million ETH are released from stake on April 12 following the completion of the ETH2.0 transition, bearish speculators predict that the price of ETH will plunge.
Santiment, a blockchain analytics platform, reports that since February, the Ethereum Net Weighted Sentiment has been negative. The ETH-weighted sentiment dropped from 7.21 on February 12 to -0.19 as of April 7.
On the flip side, the whales are supporting the bullish thesis and the accumulation pattern among Ethereum whale investors supports the idea.
The Santiment data revealed that the crypto whales with 1 million to 100 million coins began to buy when Weighted Sentiment (a technical indicator) started to move negatively. The whales increased their holdings of ETH by 2.4 million between February 12 and April 7, adding a total of about $4.4 billion to their accounts.
Source: https://coinpedia.org/ethereum/ethereums-shapella-hype-fails-to-shape-eths-bullish-trajectory-dips-below-1-9k/