After several months of gradual declines, the number of Ethereum wallets containing between 1,000 and 100,000 ETH jumped to a local peak. At the same time, smaller ETH addresses have also been on the rise, perhaps stacking for the upcoming Merge.
The data provided by Santiment revealed that the so-called whales (holding between 1K to 100K ETH) had seen a sharp increase in the past few weeks after bottoming in May, which halted a months-long negative streak.
More precisely, there were 131 new such wallets emerging until Sunday, with the total number briefly exceeding 6,666.
The trend is similar with smaller ETH investors as well. Those holding at least a full one have charted an all-time high of over 1.5 million. Addresses with 100 or more coins, on the other hand, are up to a 15-month high of more than 45,000.
The growing interest from smaller and larger investors could be attributed to the upcoming Merge. Perhaps the most anticipated event of the year in the crypto community, it will see Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS.
The network has been slowly preparing to make that leap and the 9th shadow fork going live last week was another step in that direction.
Just a few days before the aforementioned shadow fork went live, ETH had plummeted to around $1,000, and the community feared another drop below that line. However, the hype didn’t allow such a dip, and the second-largest crypto went on a roll.
It firstly broke above $1,100 but kept climbing and just hours ago neared $1,500, which became its highest price in over a month. This meant that the asset was up by about 50% in less than a week.
Somewhat expectedly, this increase in ETH’s price has affected the total value locked in the ETH 2.0 Deposit Contract, which is now up to about $18B – a monthly high.