The post What’s Happening in the Market Ahead of Ethereum Merger? Are Traders and Whales Accumulating ETH? appeared first on Coinpedia – Fintech & Cryptocurreny News Media| Crypto Guide

Many of the leading cryptocurrencies experienced double-digit weekly percentage gains despite the ongoing cryptocurrency bear market. In anticipation of the Ethereum merger, top coins increased. After peaking at $2,012 late on Friday night, the price of Ethereum has increased 16% in the past week to $1,986 at the time of writing.

The approaching merge, when Ethereum will switch to a more energy-efficient proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain, is the main cause of the frenzy surrounding ETH. On Wednesday night, the third and final testnet for Ethereum, Goerli, successfully transitioned.

Before the project switches from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, leading smart contract platform Ethereum (ETH) is being closely examined by crypto analytics company Santiment. It highlighted social media talk ahead of the mid-September switch to ETH 2.0 as a significant predictor of how the digital currency will probably move before the upgrade in a recent post.

Are whales accumulating ETH?

Santiment then looks at Ethereum as well as the entire altcoin market, noting that despite a recent market-wide surge, traders are not acting in a way that would put them at danger of a flash crash.

Most attention has been focused on Ethereum’s +80% price spike over the past 30 days, but altcoins in general have been doing well since late June. Santiment provides two conclusions regarding Ethereum after looking more closely at the charts, indicating that ETH is still moving in a bullish direction.

“Ethereum surged back over $1,880 after a positive CPI report Wednesday. This two-month high in price came with a major influx of ETH transactions valued at $100,000 or more. This is happening in tandem with whale addresses appearing to be accumulating.”

Santiment then revealed the Ethereum network earlier in the week when it reached an annual milestone by having more than 546,000 daily active addresses on average over the previous month, just as its price crossed $1,800 for the first time in 60 days.

For the first time in the past two months, Ethereum has increased above $1,800 today. The continuation of the rebound, which is being driven by an increase in the number of unique addresses engaging on the ETH network, will be reliant on the stability of BTC and the reduction of trader FOMO.

The much awaited ETH upgrade will take place on September 15th or 16th, according to developers.