First Mover Asia: Ether Climbs Over $2.1K to Further Its Post Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade Surge

Hear Alex Thorn share his take on “Bitcoin and Inflation: It’s Complicated” at Consensus 2023.

Good morning. Here’s what’s happening:

Prices: Ether rose sharply a day after the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade; bitcoin was also on the rise toward $31K.

Insights: The mass unlock of staked ETH that some crypto market observers predicted did not occur. Ether’s price rose the prospects for Ethereum and liquid staking derivatives are encouraging.

Ether Surges Past $2.1K; Bitcoin Inches Toward $31K

Crypto market observers expecting post-Shapella selling pressure to send Ether’s price plunging slogged through a day of disappointment.

The second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization started edging up steadily shortly before U.S. equity markets opened, stalling only after ETH’s price had climbed past $2,000 for the first time since last August. Ether was recently trading over $2,100, up more than 11% over the past 24 hours, as investors opted for the prospect of additional liquidity while earning staking rewards over the desire to take immediate profits and run.

“Many traders had been waiting for the end of the upgrade to start long position accumulation,” Ilya Volkov, CEO and co-founder of crypto trading service provider YouHodler, wrote CoinDesk in an email. “Therefore, neutral news about U.S. inflation plus deferred demand pushed ETH price up.”

Volkov noted that if current macroeconomic conditions don’t worsen, It is unlikely that ether will veer from a price upswing that began with other major cryptos at the start of the year, even if selling pressure increases in subsequent weeks. “Basically, ETH price stays in the same upward trend channel from the beginning of the year,” he wrote.

Shapella, also called the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade, is the final leg in the Ethereum network’s transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) to more energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. Crypto market observers had been split on its impact, with some predicting a price swing while others anticipated little change.

Bitcoin also continued its more moderately paced momentum, recently edging toward $31,000, up more than 2.5% from Monday at the same time. Other major cryptos spent much of Thursday in the green with ARB, the token of layer 2 blockchain Arbitrum, recently soaring about 33% and APT, the native crypto of layer 1 blockchain Aptos, jumping about 12%. The CoinDesk Index, a measure of crypto markets performance, was recently up nearly 5%.

Stocks closed higher with the tech-focused Nasdaq and S&P 500, which has a large tech component, rising 2% and 1.3%, respectively. A number of crypto-related stocks continued their recent upswing with miners Marathon Digital and Hut 8 Mining each rising about 15%. Recession-fearful Investors also continued to show their appetite for other assets that hold their value, sending gold above $2,050, near its all-time high of $2,069, set in 2020.

Will ether continue to rise? CoinDesk analyst Glenn Williams suggested that ETH deposits would offer some signals about its path forward. Since January 2021 the trajectory of ether deposited into ETH staking contracts has steadily risen, a direction that suggests the asset is gaining, not losing, favor,” Williams wrote. “Over the coming weeks and months, this metric will likely flatten as investors who must un-stake ETH begin the process of doing so. But for those who want to stake, Shapella’s completion signals reduced risk, increased liquidity and brought an uptick in asset value.”

Why Didn’t You Sell the News of Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade?

Going by the numbers, it seems like many ether (ETH) stakers have decided to hold onto their coins. Although several analysts predicted the just-completed Ethereum Shanghai hard fork (along with the separate Capella upgrade, together known as “Shapella”) would be a “sell-the-news” moment, ETH has actually climbed to eight-month highs. The second-largest crypto by market capitalization was trading above $2,000 for the first time since last summer, after gaining ~3% during trading hours in Asia.

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What this says about the viability of Ethereum and the outlook for the price of ETH is an open question. Shanghai, the backward-compatible hard fork, unlocked the ability for Ethereum stakers to withdraw tokens they pledged to the Ethereum deposit contract used to validate the proof-of-stake network, as well as the token payments they received for doing so. Many stakers initially pledged 32 ETH to become validators in 2020, and haven’t really had access to their coins since.

So the 18 million-plus ETH currently staked (worth about $33 billion) has not led to a torrent of sales. Loyal CoinDesk readers likely knew the “selling pressure” on ETH was overstated. As Amphibian Capital CEO James Hodges wrote on Monday, the vast majority of ETH validators were in the red leading up to the event, making it unlikely they’d cash out at a loss. Now that crypto prices are rising, led in particular by bitcoin, which broke the important $30,000 threshold this week, fortunes may reverse.

Read the full story here:

Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade is complete and the network is now processing staking withdrawals. Joining “First Mover” to discuss “Shapella,” as the upgrade is also called, is a senior protocol engineer at Ethereum client Besu, Justin Florentine. Also, internet giants and their metaverse moves are getting some regulators concerned. Sebastien Borget, co-founder and COO of The Sandbox, joined to discuss. Plus, the latest in the FTX bankruptcy case and a closer look at the crypto scene in South Korea.

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