Ethereum (ETH) suffered a brief decline on Wednesday afternoon despite increased accumulation from whales. This follows Ethereum restaking protocol Renzo restaked ETH (ezETH) crashing from its 1:1 peg with ETH and increased activities surrounding spot Ethereum ETFs.
Read more: Ethereum continues hinting at rally following reduced long liquidations
Ethereum witnessed a surge in activities on Wednesday after key events. Here are the top market movers for the number one altcoin:
Following the crash, loopers — leverage traders that repeat a loop of using their LRTs to borrow, buy and restake — saw liquidations worth $340 million. Many ETH traders capitalized on the price dip, buying ezETH and earning extra ETH after the restaked token recovered its peg, according to Lookonchain.
Also read: Ethereum shows signs of a potential rally as suspected Justin Sun wallet buys heavily
BlackRock also showed it has no intention of withdrawing its spot ETH ETF by filing an amendment to list and trade shares of the ETF under Nasdaq Rule 5711(D), Commodity-based Trust Shares, on Tuesday. No mention of staking was included in BlackRock’s amendment. Shortly after, the SEC began asking for public comments on BlackRock’s spot ETH ETF amendment.
Many investors pointed out that BlackRock has only lost once when applying for an ETF. An X user commented on BlackRock, “If they thought they were going to be denied, they would have pulled it. They’re not in the business of being denied.”
Nate Geraci, President of the ETF Store, commented:
I’m now fully recharged from spot btc ETF approval cycle…
Time for spot eth ETF.
We have broken structure in Grayscale’s ETHE, suboptimal eth futures-based ETFs, etc.
You can buy eth on publicly-traded COIN & HOOD, paying hefty fees.
No reason for spot eth ETF not to exist.
— Nate Geraci (@NateGeraci) April 24, 2024
Ethereum suffered a pullback after briefly breaking past the $3,279 resistance of April 15. The dip is likely a wider market movement as other top cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Solana and XRP also shared in the decrease.
The recent decline seems to have cast a shadow of doubt on a potential rally that ETH’s price movement has been hinting at. This also shows strong resistance at the upper level of the $2,852 and $3,300 range.
ETH/USDT 4-hour chart
A potential upswing above this range could see ETH do a quick run to break past the $3,406 resistance, confirming its rally. As previously stated, the largest altcoin would need increased trading volume and bullish strength to break above the range.
The SEC’s decision on a spot ETH ETF and Bitcoin’s price movement will play crucial roles in determining the direction of ETH’s price in the coming weeks.
After the Merge, the Ethereum community is looking at the Sharding upgrade next, which has been slated for sometime later in the year. The development can be summarized in four words, “scalability through more efficient data storage.” The software update will increase the capacity of the blockchain, widening the amount of data that can be stored or accessed. At the same time, all services running atop the Ethereum blockchain will enjoy significantly reduced transaction fees.
A fork is the splitting of a blockchain after developers agree and proceed to implement upgrades. The decision comes after these developers reach a consensus for a software upgrade. The ensuing part will see one part continue with the status as is, while the other one will proceed with new features combined with the former ones. A hard fork basically entails permanent divergence of a new side chain from the original one, while a soft fork is doing the same, only difference being that it is temporary.
EIP-4844 is an improvement proposal for the Ethereum network. The upgrade promises reduced gas fees, which is a valuable offering considering the high transaction cost that continues to daunt crypto players. It has been a long-standing concern for the Ethereum network. The proposal is also referred to as “proto-Danksharding,” with an unmatched ability to increase the speed of transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. At the same time, it helps to reduce the transaction cost as everything becomes decentralized.
Gas token is a new, innovative Ethereum contract where users can tokenize gas on the Ethereum network. This means they can store gas when it is cheap and start to deploy the gas once the market has shifted to the north. The use of Gas token helps to subsidize high gas prices on transactions, meaning investors can do everything from arbitraging decentralized exchanges to buying into initial coin offerings (ICOs) early.