Ethereum (ETH) Flirts Around Its All-Time High of $1800 As Exchange Balance Drops, Grayscale Adds More

The world’s second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum (ETH) is holding strong at its all-time high levels of $1800. At press, ETH is trading at a price of $1811 with a market cap of $206 billion. The Ethereum price continues to hold these high amid strong on-chain indicators.

As per data on Glassnode, the ETH balance on exchanges has just reached a 16-month low.

At the same time, the total number of ETH deposits with Ethereum 2.0 deposit contracts just crossed 3 million ETH.

Another on-chain data provider Santiment notes that the Ethereum network has registered strong network growth in terms of daily new addresses joining the network. Thus, it has resulted in strong capital inflows in ETH price taking the price higher. Over the last three months, the new addresses joining the Ethereum blockchain has surged by around 57%.

CME Ether Futures and Institutional Money Rain in Ethereum

The Ethereum (ETH) price rally comes as CME Ether Futures went live for trading on Monday, February 10. The Ether Futures has registered a strong response from investors on the very first day. On Day 1, 388 CME Ether Futures contracts were traded 19,400 ETH, or around $33 million.

The official website states a single contract has “50 times the value of the Ether-Dollar Reference Rate Index (ETHUSD_RR) and is quoted in US dollars per one Ether”.

The Ether Futures have already attracted institutional money towards Ethereum. Over the last week, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) has made aggressive ETH purchases and continues to do so even now. On Tuesday, February 9, ETHE purchased another ~10,000 ETH coins taking its total holdings to 3.05 Million, as per data on Bybt.

So far this month, Grayscale has added over 100,000 ETH coins. Also, data from CoinShares suggests that Ethereum dominated crypto institutional inflows last week. Of the total $245 million entering the crypto space, $195 i.e. a massive 80% went to Ethereum. The CoinShares report states:

“We believe investors are looking to diversify and are growing increasingly comfortable with Ethereum fundamentals. Bitcoin had its lowest inflows (US$42m) since the all-time highs were achieved in the week ending 8th January 2021”.

The Ethereum gas fee continues to stay high. After some relief to the investors over the weekend, the average transaction fee on ETH has shot once again above $24 on Tuesday, February 9, as per data on BitInfo.