More than half of all Ethereum hasn’t moved in 12 months

More than half of Ethereum’s circulating supply has not moved in more than a year, with only 39.6% of Ether (ETH) changing hands over the past 12 months.

According to Glassnode’s ‘hodlwaves,’ which offers a chronological breakdown of the velocity of on-chain transactions, roughly 28% of Ether last moved between the past 12 and 24 months — comprising the largest segment of on-chain activity.

The data suggests that many whales spent 2019 accumulating Ether in advance of the project’s ETH 2.0 overhaul — for which phase 0 is expected to commence in the coming months, allowing users to stake their Ether for the first time. 

Around 20% of tokens have not moved since before October 2017, with analysts watching to see if a percentage of these coins are moved into staking with the roll-out of phase 0.

~60% of all ETH hasn’t moved in 1+ years.

With eth2 phase 0 approaching, it’ll be interesting to see how much this percentage comes down by as Ethereum OG’s move their stash into staking.

I’m particularly curious to see if any of the coins in the 5+ years category move pic.twitter.com/9H38dYAHDq

— Anthony Sassano | sassal.eth ⛽ (@sassal0x) October 14, 2020

Phase 0’s coming launch appears to have sparked a recent increase in the short-term velocity of on-chain transfers, with the share of Ether moved in the past 24 hours increasing from less than 0.5% during January and February to average more than 1% in early September. 

Weekly velocity also increased from 1.5% at the start of the year to tag 5% in both July and September, while monthly and quarterly transfers similarly increased steadily since June.

By contrast, Bitcoin’s short-term on-chain velocity has largely declined since the pre-halving hype and ‘Black Thursday’ crash of early 2020, with weekly transfers sliding from nearly 6% of supply in February to between 3.5% and 4% in September.