The Ethereum (ETH) market is poised to reach $2,000 during the upcoming Shanghai Upgrade. After consolidating around $1,800 for the past two weeks, the second-largest digital asset and king of smart contracts reached an eight-month high of roughly $1,942 in the past 24 hours. Despite a slight drop of around 1.39% on Thursday, Ethereum was trading around $1,884 during the early London trading session.
Bullish Outlook on Shanghai Upgrade
The Shanghai upgrade scheduled for April 12 has stirred mixed reactions within the Ethereum ecosystem. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that the Shanghai upgrade will be bullish for the Ethereum network in the long term.
Related: Ethereum Gears Up For The Massive Shanghai Upgrade: Here’s What To Expect – Coinpedia Fintech News
The upgrade will instill more confidence in the Ethereum staking and unshackling program, leading to an increase in institutional investors. Currently, around 17.9 million Ethers have been staked by about 562k validators.
Different Opinions on Short-Term Effects
Despite the positive long-term outlook, analysts have different opinions on the effects of the Shanghai Upgrade in the short term. Crypto data analyst James V. Straten suggests that Ethereum’s options market shows investors’ caution about potential unlocks during the Shanghai Upgrade.
On the other hand, crypto market intelligence platform Santiment has identified that Ethereum’s 10 largest non-exchange wallets now hold 3.44 times more than the 10 largest exchange wallets.
Ethereum’s Transition to Proof-of-Stake
The Shanghai Upgrade is among the last steps for the Ethereum network’s transition to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. While the previous consensus mechanism, PoW, has been criticized as power-hungry, the current system has downsides too.
Notably, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has indicated that all crypto-staking programs are unregistered securities.
What do you think about Ethereum’s long-term bullish outlook with the upcoming Shanghai Upgrade? Are you optimistic?
Source: https://coinpedia.org/ethereum/is-the-ethereum-shanghai-hard-fork-a-game-changer-or-a-bust-for-eth-investors/