Ethereum Price Slides As Staked Token Reaches New ATH Ahead Of Hyped Merge

Despite changes in the asset’s price, Ethereum is steadily adding to the ETH 2.0 staking contract.

According to the development team, this occurs about a month before the Merge is scheduled to occur.

According to Dune Analytics data, more over 13.2 million ETH have been deposited to the staking contract, however there are only about 80,000 unique depositors.

The graph above shows how ETH’s amount locked in the staking contract has gradually increased and reached a new all-time high in terms of ether.

A far cry from the peak reached last year, when ETH was close to $5,000, the USD value had soared to just shy of $24 billion.

The remarkable results come as the Ethereum development team continues to provide updates on the progress of the switch from PoW to PoS.

The most anticipated event in the bitcoin sector this year is referred to as the Merge.

Among other advantages, it should make Ethereum less energy-intensive and increase the network’s durability.

Numerous well-known crypto insiders predict that it will significantly affect the price of ETH. According to recent claims made by Arthur Hayes, it might increase the asset’s USD valuation in a manner comparable to BTC’s halving.

On the other hand, Mark Cuban cautioned that the Merge might initially be a “sell-the-news” event but thinks it’s a good move overall.

According to the weekly shift in the Ether-Bitcoin cross rate, Christophe Barraud, chief economist, strategist, and top forecaster at Bloomberg, Ethereum is poised to lose ground against Bitcoin for the first time in seven weeks.

After the Consumer Price Index (CPI) or inflation data report came in better than expected, Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin in recovery despite the decline relative to BTC as both remain highly correlated with the S&P 500 stocks, according to a report published on August 17 by the on-chain social metrics platform Santiment.

Featured image from Pixabay, Chart from TradingView.com, Delphi Digital