- Ethereum has been seeing some incredibly lackluster price action throughout the past several weeks and months, setting a series of lower lows while losing ground against Bitcoin
- Despite showing signs of technical weakness, data shows retail investors have been busily accumulating the cryptocurrency
- This trend isn’t unique to just retail investors either, as data also reveals that institutional investors have also been stocking up on ETH
Ethereum has seen some lackluster price action in recent times, struggling to match Bitcoin’s upwards momentum throughout the past few weeks while also setting a series of lower lows.
The cryptocurrency’s continued weakness has not been enough to thwart buying pressure from both retail and institutional traders.
It does appear that these two investors groups have been using the cryptocurrency’s relatively low prices as an opportunity to gain exposure to it, suggesting that they still believe its long-term outlook is incredibly bright.
Ethereum Flashes Signs of Immense Weakness
At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading down just under 1% at its current price of $206.
The cryptocurrency has been stuck in a firm downtrend ever since it rallied to highs of $290 in February of this year.
In the time since setting these yearly highs, the second largest cryptocurrency has been woefully underperforming Bitcoin, which just recently revisited its yearly highs before facing a harsh rejection.
It now appears that Bitcoin’s inability to climb into the five-figure price region could lead the entire market into a downtrend – which could be grave for ETH due to its recent weakness.
Investors Accumulate ETH Despite Technical Weakness
This technical weakness hasn’t been enough to dissuade investors from gaining exposure to the cryptocurrency.
Recent data from analytics platform Glassnode shows that the number of wallet addresses holding over 100 ETH has rocketed in recent times.
“ETH Number of Addresses holding 100+ coins just reached an ATH of 47,722.000. Previous ATH of 47,714.000 was observed on 21 May 2020.”
Data from Grayscale Investments seems to elucidate a similar trend of accumulation amongst institutional investors as well, as the company’s Ethereum Trust has seen its AUM grow by 23.6x over the past year.
“Grayscale Invest Ethereum Trust has grown its AUM from $11.7m to $276.5m, a 23.6x increase despite a lower ETH price. Redemption are not possible for this product now so the only path is upwards as well,” one trader noted while pointing to the chart seen below.
Although it is unclear as to why investors are bullish on Ethereum’s long-term outlook, it is possible that the imminent launch of ETH 2.0 could be the suspect behind this ongoing accumulation.
Ethereum’s test net migration to 2.0 is anticipated to take place at some point in Q3 of this year, and will transition Ethereum towards Proof of Stake from its current Proof of Work consensus system.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
