As ETH’s price settles around $1,800 following the latest slumps, Ethereum investors continue to withdraw their holdings from centralized exchanges. Consequently, this has led to a new low of ETH tokens held on such trading venues, according to on-chain data.
Data provided by the analytics company CryptoQuant informed that the number of Ethereum tokens held on centralized exchanges has been gradually decreasing since the last quarter of 2020. At the time, investors stored relatively stable portions of about 26 million coins for several consecutive months.
However, the situation changed in September last year, approximately when the asset’s price started its impressive ascend.
In the following months, the supply held on such exchanges plummeted. As the graph below demonstrates, this led to a new low registered just recently of less than 21 million.
This number means that about 24% of the 115 million ETH in circulations are currently sitting on centralized trading platforms.
Previously, CryptoPotato reported that the overall ETH activity on exchanges is significantly lower than the 2017/2018 data, meaning that the selling pressure is weaker than three years ago.
It could be attributed to Ethereum’s ever-expanding role in the cryptocurrency space. Its blockchain is the underlying technology behind two of the largest ongoing manias – NFT and decentralized finance.
Additionally, the upcoming transition from proof of work to proof of stake would enable ETH holders to stake their portions and earn new tokens.
All of the above has had a massive impact on the price of the second-largest cryptocurrency in the past several months. As mentioned above, ETH’s increase started in September/October last year when the asset sat around $350.
Ethereum reached and broke numerous milestones since then. It started by overcoming $1,000 in early January, painting a new all-time high above $1,450, conquering $2,000 in February, and registering a new record at $2,050.
Despite the subsequent roller-coaster that drove it to a low of $1,300, ETH is still 160% up year-to-date at its current price position of $1,800.
Furthermore, this increase impacted Ethereum’s market capitalization, which is well above $200 billion now. Per data from AssetDash, this sizeable number places the cryptocurrency in the top 50 largest assets by market cap.
