Ethereum price rose to a 40-day peak of $3,719 on Tuesday May 21, 2024, up 30% over the past week, bullish staking trends provide a glimpse into what to expect after the spot ETF approvals.
Ethereum Price Hits 65-day Peak, Overtakes BTC as ETF Approval Looms.
According to Bloomberg analysts, there’s now a 75% chance that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will approve ETH spot ETF this week. Based on recent filings from digital asset management giants, including VanEck and BlackRock, the SEC is now in a race against time to deliver a verdict before the May 23/24 deadline.
Curiously, Ethereum price has been on a tear since Bloomberg Senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas broke news of the impending ETF approval broke on Monday, outperforming the Bitcoin in May 2024 by a considerable margin.
Ethereum ETH price vs Bitcoin BTC price action May 2024 | TradingView
Ethereum price rose to a 65-day peak of $3,811 in the early hours of May 21, bringing it May 2024 gains to 36.54%. A closer look at the chart above shows how ETH performance in the last 48 hours has seen it overtake Bitcoin in terms of monthly timeframe growth.
While ETH price has surged 36.54% between May 1 and May 21, Bitcoin price has only increased by 25.1%. This underlines crypto investors’ current overwhelming preference to take Long positions on ETH against BTC ahead of the SEC’s impending approval verdict.
ETH Staking Surges $90 Million on 3 Days
More so, there are growing speculations that ETH ETFs will pull more demand than BTC ETFs due to added passive income that could be generated by Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake protocol.
Recent trends observed on the beacon chain suggests that investors are already making strategic moves to front-run the possible upside from inflow of funds into ETH ETFs.
The chart below shows the real-time changes in the number of coins currently staked on the Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain smart contract.
Ethereum ETH 20 Staking trends May 18 May 21 | Beaconchain
Since the turn of the week, Ethereum investors have staked an additional 25,184 ETH, according to official data from the beacon chains. This brings the total stake to 32,154,810 ETH.
Valued at the current price, the newly-staked ETH coins are worth approximately $95 million. This suggests that majority of holders are looking to hold out for more gains despite ETH prices currently trending at 65-day peaks.
More so, with the added passive income from staking, some analysts predict that BTC ETF holders may seek to switch to Ethereum ETFs upon approval.
If this scenario plays out, ETH staking contracts may witness a prolonged trend of rising deposits in the days ahead. Since staking reduces the amount of ETH available to be traded on exchanges, there’s a chance that bullish pressure on Ethereum’s price could intensify.
ETH price forecast: $4k Breakout Imminent?
Ethereum price is currently trending above, $3745 mark at the time of writing on Tuesday. And the $95 million surge in Ethereum 2.0 staking deposits this week suggests that bull are angling for another leg-up above $4,000.
IntoTheBlock’s global in and out of the money data shows that the next major resistance lies at the $3,900 level.
Ethereum ETH Price Forecast
As seen above, 1.83 million investors had acquire 642,430 ETH at the average price of $3,905. Considering that they have been holding at a loss for over 2 months, there’s a chance that many of them could book some profit, and inadvertently slow down the rally.
But if ETH bulls can overturn that resistance sell-wall, a parabolic breakout above $4,000 could be on the cards when the SEC confirms the approval verdict on Ethereum ETFs.
