Original - Odaily

Author - Asher

Editor - Qin Xiaofeng

Recently, due to Grayscales continued market crash, the price of BTC has continued to decline, and ETH has also experienced a significant correction.

Data shows that ETH continued to decline from the high of 2,712 USDT on January 12 until it fell below 2,200 USDT yesterday, with the lowest falling to 2,168 USDT and the maximum drop of more than 20%; as of press time, ETH had rebounded to 2,250 USDT.

Where has the recent selling pressure on ETH come from, and what level of potential selling pressure is there currently? Can potential buying support the market and even push the price of ETH to a new high? Odaily will help you analyze it from the data and information level.

Data dimension: ETH selling pressure and buying

The largest seller, Celsius: has deposited more than 280,000 ETH to CEX

Regarding the selling pressure on ETH, the first thing to mention is Celsius. Since November 13, 2023, Celsius has continued to deposit ETH to multiple exchanges. Among them, several larger ETH transfers at the end of 2023 are as follows:

• In November 2023, Celsius deposited a total of 19,160 ETH (approximately US$40.31 million) to FalconX, Coinbase and OKX, with an average price of US$2,040；

• December 14, 2023 - December 19, Celsius deposited a total of 48,200 ETH (approximately $108 million) to Coinbase and FalconX, with an average price of $2,240.
  

On January 5, 2024, Celsius posted on the X platform that in the process of preparing asset allocation, Celsius has begun the process of asset recovery and rebalancing to ensure sufficient liquidity. As a result, existing ETH holdings will be unstaking to offset certain costs incurred throughout the restructuring process. Since then, Celsius has deposited ETH to the exchange more and more frequently, and several transactions that have attracted market attention are as follows:

• From January 2 to January 5, 2024, Celsius unsecured 30,000 ETH (approximately $68.46 million) from Figment and deposited it into Coinbase and FalconX, with an average price of $2,282;

• On January 10, 2024, Celsius released 14,000 ETH pledges (approximately $31.64 million) and deposited them into Coinbase;

• On January 12, 2024, Celsius released 14,000 ETH pledges (approximately $36.53 million) and deposited them into Coinbase and FalconX；

• On January 23, 2024, Celsius deposited 15,200 ETH (approximately $35.99 million) to Coinbase and FalconX;

• On January 24, 2024, Celsius deposited a total of 18,000 ETH (approximately $39.34 million) to Coinbase.

The chart below shows Celsius selling ETH from November 13, 2023.As of today, Celsius has deposited 280,760 ETH ($621 million) into Coinbase, FalconX, and OKX, and currently holds 540,029 ETH ($1.2 billion). Therefore, Celsius still has strong selling pressure on ETH.

Celsius sells ETH situation

Deposit a large amount of ETH into Blast

During this period, one of the reasons why users continued to purchase ETH and stake it came from Blast. Currently, although the Blast mainnet is not online, users who deposit assets can obtain the corresponding ETH pledge income and stablecoin interest. Moreover, half of the Blast airdrop will be given to users who deposit liquidity on Blast. Therefore, its popularity for purchasing and staking ETH is extremely high.

DefiLlama shows that Blast’s TVL exceeded US$100 million on the second day after it was launched, and its TVL exceeded US$1 billion 34 days later. Currently, Blast’s TVL exceeds US$1.239 billion, of which nearly 500,000 ETH (approximately US$1.1 billion) are deposited. Lido protocol. It is worth noting that the 500,000 ETH pledged are expected to be unlocked when Blast is launched on the mainnet at the end of February this year.

Blast lock ETH data

Celsius announced on January 5, 2024 that it would accelerate the unlocking of ETH and continue to transfer it to the exchange. Therefore, we focus on analyzing the inflow of ETH into the Blast ecosystem after January 5 this year. According to data from DeFiLlama, from January and May to today, Blast has added a total of approximately 54,000 ETH locked up.

Image source:DeFiLlama

Manta Pacific: A total of nearly 290,000 ETH has been deposited

Manta Pacific is another protocol that has become very popular recently and allows users to continue to purchase and stake ETH. As of today, Manta Pacific TVL is nearly US$1.5 billion, with a 72.48% increase in 7 days, accounting for 7.34% of the Ethereum Layer 2 market, ranking third overall, second only to Arbitrum and OP Mainnet.

Image source:l2 beat

Currently, according to data on Dune, the number of ETH transferred to Manta Pacific through cross-chain is 289,000. Among them, a total of approximately 35,000 ETH has been deposited from January to May to today.

Image source:Dune

summary

According to the data on Celsius selling ETH, Blast and Manta Pacific depositing ETH, if Celsius continues to sell the 540,029 ETH it still holds, the intensity of the selling pressure will be far greater than users buying in popular projects such as Blast and Manta Pacific. The strength of ETH. Therefore, if there are not more agreements to attract ETH locks in the near future, it will be difficult for ETH to stabilize the current price.

Information dimension: ETH spot ETF and Cancun upgrade

ETH spot ETF is far away

With the passage of the Bitcoin spot ETF, the market has high hopes for the ETH spot ETF. Coinbase said: “Ethereum may have a breakout year. The news of the Bitcoin ETF is a boon for Ethereum, which once surged to more than $2,700, reaching its highest point since May 2022. There are reasons to be more optimistic about ETH’s near-term prospects. First, several of the firms behind Bitcoin ETFs — including BlackRock and VanEck — are also planning Ethereum-based spot ETFs.”

However, there are also some opposing voices who believe that an ETH spot ETF may not come out. Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terrett said that the U.S. SEC’s position at this moment is “firm opposition” and that there is currently “some internal resistance” to the approval of an Ethereum spot ETF. U.S. SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the agency does not want to repeat the same delay mistakes with Ethereum ETFs, saying we need to apply the same normal considerations to these products that we have to similar products. Bankless analyst Jack Inabinet pointed out that the market has some doubts about the approval of Ethereum spot ETFs. Some experts believe that the SEC may need to clarify its non-security status before approving spot ETFs, but Gensler’s regulatory stance on Ethereum is currently unclear.

JPMorgan Chase believes that the possibility of spot Ethereum ETF being approved before May is no more than 50%. “The SEC is filing lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges that provide staking services for proof-of-stake blockchains (POS) including Ethereum, making the approval of spot Ethereum spot ETFs more challenging, at least in these That is until the lawsuit is resolved.”

Cancun upgrade: launch may be delayed

Another thing worth looking forward to in Ethereum this year is the Cancun upgrade. On January 17 this year, Ethereum conducted the Cancun upgrade on the Goerli testnet. However, neither the price of ETH itself nor L2s OP and ARB had a good increase due to this information, but continued to fall with the price of BTC.

According to social media information, many users believe that the Cancun upgrade of the ETH mainnet will be further delayed (as shown below). Some users even said: It shouldnt be called Cancun upgrade, but bumpy upgrade.

Image source:Twitter

At present, the time for the Cancun upgrade has not been officially determined. According to Ethereum’s usual tone, there is a high possibility of postponement.

To sum up, the news is positive, but it has not really been realized and further development is still needed. In the short term, the selling pressure on ETH is strong, the retracement may continue to exceed that of BTC, and the ETH/BTC exchange rate may fall further.