Ethereum had its Shapella hard fork last week, and so far, over 1 million Ether (ETH), valued at $2.1 billion, has been withdrawn from Ethereum’s Beacon Chain within the first four days, pushing the price of Ether over $2,100 for the first time in 11 months.
A surge in increased staking and withdrawal requests
It is essential to know that the 1.03 million ETH withdrawals resulted from 473,700 withdrawal requests, with April 15 being the largest withdrawal day at 392,800 ETH, according to data from beaconcha.in.
Nearly 87% of the active validators, or 469,000 out of 540,000, can now withdraw their staked Ether. The first four days of Shapella have yielded close to a 10% rise in Ether’s price, despite the Ethereum community being divided on its potential impact.
The Shapella hard fork is expected to ultimately increase the amount of Ether staked, strengthening Ethereum at the consensus level. This can be attributed to Shapella being a de-risking event and more ETH being staked.
According to expert analysts, the closure of Kraken’s staking services may have contributed to the higher figures. The large amount of un-staked Ether from Kraken is expected to be “recycled” back into the Beacon Chain through other entities.
Shapella to attract more institutional investors
Even though the positive price action of ETH is expected to cool off this week due to increased selling pressure, Shapella is expected to attract more institutional investors to stake in the Ethereum network.
The 1 million ETH milestone marks a 500% increase from Glassnode’s April 11 prediction, which estimated only 170,000 Ether to be un-staked after Shapella’s first week. On-chain analytics firm Nansen predicted that 1.4 million Ether would be withdrawn within the first few days of Shapella, slightly overshooting the actual figure.
