ETH 2.0 Deposit Contract Hits 13 Million Ethereum

Ethereum (ETH), the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency, saw a minor recovery in the past few days. Amid the recent comeback, the total number of Ethereum staked under the deposit contract of ETH 2.0 crossed the mark of 13 million for the first time in history.

Since the Beacon Chain’s launch in December 2020, the crypto industry’s support for the network upgrade of ETH has spiked substantially. Currently, the overall value of staked Ethereum under the deposit contract of its network upgrade stands at around $15 billion.

However, due to the latest plunge of almost 75% in the price of Ethereum, the value of the deposit contract of ETH 2.0 dipped substantially. In December 2021, the value of the mentioned deposit contract stood at approximately $40 billion.

The recent week saw some improvements in the retail and institutional demand for ETH. According to the weekly digital asset fund flows report published by CoinShares, Ethereum investment products saw inflows worth $5 million last week. Additionally, ETH transaction fees have dipped significantly in the last few days.

On Thursday, Bitcoin managed to stay above the price level of $20,000. However, BTC network activity, including the total number of active BTC addresses decreased recently.

“Bitcoin is consolidating above $20,000 at the time of writing, whilst negative sentiment remains among market participants. CoinShares reported inflows of $51 million into the newly launched product ProShares Short Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITI). This product bets against the price of Bitcoin, showing that institutions are bearish on the asset," Marcus Sotiriou, an Analyst at GlobalBlock, said.

"However, the inflows could be attributed to the product being one of the first to allow institutional traders to gain short exposure, as opposed to an increase in negative sentiment. This increase in short bitcoin funds inflows comes weeks after institutional investors withdrew over $423 million from crypto-focused funds," Sotiriou added.