The ongoing Ethereum (ETH) network development is touted to potentially impact the asset’s price positively in the future despite undergoing a significant correction in recent months.
Investors are showing their readiness to reap from a possible Ethereum rally by investing in ETH futures.
In this perspective, on-chain activity indicates that an Ethereum whale purchased ETH futures contract worth $1.7 billion within an hour, data by cryptocurrency analysis platform Crypto Quant shared by Web3 on-chain analyst Kate Young Ju via Twitter on July 20.
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The purchase marks Ethereum’s future contracts seven-monthtly highest hourly volume based on market orders. Notably, Ethereum futures refer to legal agreements to buy or sell Ether at a future date, and they derive their value from Ethereum.
Increasing Ethereum whale activity
The Ethereum whale activity indicates that the asset’s recent recovery is gaining momentum and possibly intends to sustain itself. By press time, the asset was trading at $1,500 with gains of about 48% in the last seven days. The weekly gains have dwarfed Ethereum’s rival Bitcoin (BTC), which has recorded a spike of 19% in the same period.
Notably, the Ethereum futures contract purchase complements the recent whale activity that has picked up in recent days. After slow accumulation in mid to late June, Ethereum whales have generally increased their hoarding activity hitting over 20% as of July 18.
Impact of the Merge upgrade
Currently, the decentralised finance (DeFi) cryptocurrency is preparing for the final migration to the Proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol from the energy-intensive proof-of-work (PoW) mechanism, with the Merge upgrade slated for late September. In the wake of the upgrade, Ethereum has shown signs of recovery in correlation with the general market movement.
As reported by Finbold, 50 fintech leaders projected that the second-ranked cryptocurrency would likely trade at $1,711 by the end of 2022, with the Merge upgrade playing a key role.
The upcoming upgrade has also triggered activity on other assets like Ethereum Classic (ETC) as miners migrate from Ethereum. In the wake of the upgrade update, ETC spiked almost 50% in a week as the network positioned itself to accommodate the PoW miners and the ETH hash rate.
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