Ethereum Back At $3,200 As Sharks Show Strong Accumulation

[Ben Graham]

Ethereum has witnessed a recovery surge recently as on-chain data shows the shark-sized investors have been participating in strong buying.

Ethereum Sharks Have Added 450,000 ETH Since Mid-November

According to data from on-chain analytics firm Santiment, the supply of the Ethereum sharks has gone up recently. The indicator of relevance here is the “Supply Distribution,” measuring the total amount of tokens that a given wallet group as a whole is holding right now.

In the context of the current topic, the cohort of focus is the one corresponding to a coin range of 1,000 to 10,000 ETH. At the current exchange rate, the lower bound of the range roughly converts to $3.2 million and the upper one to $32 million. Investors of this large size are popularly known as the sharks. While not as massive as the whales (addresses with more than 10,000 ETH), the sharks are still considered influential entities. This can make their behavior often worth keeping an eye on.

As the chart below, shared by Santiment, suggests, the latest Ethereum shark behavior has been one of accumulation.

During the November price decline, the Supply Distribution had been going down for the Ethereum sharks, but around the time of the market bottom, its trend began to reverse. Between November 18th and December 2nd, the sharks added a total of 450,000 ETH (worth about $1.4 billion) to their wallets, a massive amount. Alongside this sharp uptick in the metric, ETH went through its price recovery.

The cryptocurrency’s sharp retrace to start December didn’t dissuade these large hands, either, as their supply only continued to rise. This may be one of the factors behind the quick resumption of bullish momentum that the asset has seen. Another bullish factor has been the trend in the Network Growth, another on-chain indicator displayed in the chart. This metric measures the daily number of addresses that are coming online on the Ethereum network for the first time.

A wallet is considered “online” when it participates in transaction activity on the blockchain, so the Network Growth essentially tracks the addresses making their very first transfer.

From the graph, it’s visible that this Ethereum metric has also surged recently, hitting a peak value of 190,000 addresses. Generally, a surge in network activity is usually a positive sign for any rally’s sustainability, as it implies that the network is able to attract fresh attention.

That said, too much attention too fast can actually end up having a negative effect on the cryptocurrency. It now remains to be seen whether the sharks will continue to buy in the near future and if investor FOMO will remain at healthy levels.

ETH Price

At the time of writing, Ethereum is floating around $3,185, up more than 5% over the last seven days.