As noted by analyst Ali Martinez on Twitter, since the beginning of September, no less than 68 new Ethereum whales. This fact coincided with a 30% drop in the ETH rate.
Martinez used data from the analytical website Santiment. He noted that the number of wallets that hold from 1,000 to 10,000 ETH (from $350,000 to $3.5 million at the current exchange rate) increased by 68 over the period from September 1 to September 3. At the same time, on August 31, the rate of the second cryptocurrency reached $367, and by September 5, it fell to $326.
Note that the boom in the decentralized finance (DeFi) industry has significantly increased the demand for Ether. The increased volume of transactions on the Ethereum network led to a significant increase in fees, but after the fall in the ETH rate, both the number of transactions and the size of fees decreased.
Ether still remains the second-largest cryptocurrency in terms of capitalization, which is valued at $39.7 billion. The USDT stablecoin is in third place.
Note that recently Vitalik Buterin, who is one of the co-founders of Ethereum, suggested to triple the cost of smart contracts that run the updates on the network to tackle the issue of perpetually growing transaction fees.
