One trader said ether’s sell-off on positive news is typical “buy the rumors, sell the facts” behavior.

Bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) prices fell in the past 24 hours even as several ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were approved for listing on U.S. exchanges.

Ether has dropped 4% since the approval, CoinGecko data shows. It had risen 20% over the course of a week amid indications of pending approval and updated odds of the ETFs getting approved. The broad-based CoinDesk 20, a liquid index that tracks the biggest tokens, fell 4.5% over 24 hours and the crypto market cap lost 2.9% to $2.5 trillion.

“Ethereum’s sell-off on positive news is a typical “buy the rumors, sell the facts” reaction of speculators,” Alex Kuptsikevich, a senior market analyst at FxPro, said in an email to CoinDesk. “We shouldn’t be surprised if the price pulls back to the $3000 area again, returning to an important consolidation area. From these levels, large institutional investors can start building a position in ETFs.

“We saw the same in January after the approval of the Bitcoin ETF, which took 19% off its price in the following two weeks before there was a spectacular reversal,” he said.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday approved key regulatory filings tied to ether ETFs, a historic milestone for the second-largest cryptocurrency. They are not, however, cleared to trade. Although the SEC approved the 19B-4 form that allows for the offering and listing of ETFs, it must still green light the funds’ S-1 filings before investors can buy them.

The regulator approved documents for eight ETFs – from VanEck, Fidelity, Franklin, Grayscale, Bitwise, ARK Invest 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy and BlackRock – for listing on the Nasdaq, NYSE Arca, and Cboe BZX exchanges.

If the ETFs are approved for trading, a significant influx of institutional capital is likely. Standard Chartered predicted inflows of as much as $45 billion in the first 12 months.

Some traders say they expect ether to rally over 60% in the coming months, with a marked increase in futures and spot buying demand for the token in the past week.

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QCP’s sentiment towards ether is cautiously optimistic, with concerns about potential corrections and the impact of leverage in the market.

Ether (ETH) prices could see a possible correction, Singapore-based digital assets trading firm QCP Capital said in a series of recent notes published to its Telegram channel.

The trading firm is still cautiously optimistic about the long-term potential of ether.

Although ether has sailed past $4,000, its highest price in two years, QCP writes that it’s observing a shift in market sentiment, marked by negative risk reversals. These reversals measure the difference in implied volatility between call and put options and have turned negative, likely due to the low probability of a spot ether ETF being approved in the near future.

Historically, network upgrades like Bitcoin’s Taproot and the Ethereum merge have had minimal impact on pricing under bearish and sideways market conditions, but with current market dynamics, there could be price reflexivity on Ethereum and its Layer 2s, potentially influenced by the already priced-in Dencun upgrade or a positive knee-jerk reaction, along with possible capital inflows into Layer 2 ecosystems, QCP analysts wrote in a Telegram interview with CoinDesk.

A Polymarket prediction market contract only gives a 31% chance of an ether ETF being approved by May 31.

CoinDesk recently reported that market data shows a rise in demand for ether put options as traders prepare for short-term weakness. This is reflected in the negative skew of one-month and 60-day call-put ratios, while longer-term sentiment remains positive.

QCP also wrote that it is concerned about the amount of leverage currently in the market, but traders will quickly buy back any dips. Excessive leverage in the market is said to have caused the May 2021 crash, where prices fell by 30% over the course of 24 hours, and a 10% correction in bitcoin’s price in January.

Ether has outperformed the CoinDesk 20 (CD20), which tracks the world’s largest and most liquid cryptocurrencies, gaining 54% in the last month versus the CD20’s 50% rise.

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Vitalik Buterin transferred over $1 million worth of ether to crypto exchange Coinbase on Monday.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin deposited 600 ether (ETH), which is around $1 million worth of the cryptocurrency, to crypto exchange Coinbase on Monday, according to data from Ethereum blockchain scanning website, etherscan.

The move comes as ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization suffered a 10% decline over the last seven days, amid a broad market downturn which saw traders witness $1 billion in liquidations. Ether has recovered slightly on Monday, trading in the green over the last 24 hours at $1,700.

On Sunday, Buterin repaid 250,000 RAI and withdrew $1.6 million worth of ether, according to on-chain tracker, lookonchain. RAI is a non-pegged stablecoin backed by ETH.

It is not clear why the Ethereum co-founder transferred the ether to centralized exchange Coinbase.

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That was nearly 30% of all liquidated futures on Binance, the data shows.

An unknown single trader, or a trading entity, lost $55 million on an ether trade against binance usd (BUSD) on crypto exchange Binance as crypto markets plunged suddenly late on Thursday, data shows.

The position was made up of 38,986.528 ether (ETH) and liquidated at the $1,434 price level. That was nearly 30% of all liquidated futures on Binance, the data shows.

The unusual amount for a single trader suggests a large firm, or a large ether holder, was hit hard in yesterday’s steep drop.

Ether dropped from $1,780 to as low as $1,560 within minutes, with trading volume surging from $6 billion to over $20 billion across exchanges.

The asset then quickly recovered some of those losses amid late reports of U.S. securities regulators planning to approve ether (ETH) futures ETFs for trading in the country. ETH traded at just over $1,690 in Asian evening hours on Friday – down 6% in the past 24 hours.

Such a price drop in ether came amid one of the largest futures liquidations in over a year – higher than the market impact of crypto exchange FTX’s collapse.

Data suggests highly leveraged longs, or bets on, higher prices were taken out in a textbook long squeeze event amid unsubstantiated rumors of SpaceX selling its bitcoin holdings. The company merely wrote down the book value of its holdings, which was interpreted by sales in parts of the market, leading to selling pressure.

Bitcoin fell 7% in the past 24 hours, registering its largest drop in recent months amid a period of low volatility. Meanwhile, xrp (XRP), doge (DOGE) and bitcoin cash (BCH) led losses among majors falling as much as 15%.

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Ether (ETH), bnb (BNB) and cardano (ADA) were similarly little changed. Dogecoin (DOGE) and Avalanche blockchain’s avax (AVAX) fell 1.5% to lead losses among major tokens.

Major cryptos remained flat over the past 24 hours even as financial giant PayPal announced plans to issue a stablecoin in the coming days – suggesting overall market sentiment remains tepid despite fundamental developments.

Bitcoin traded just over $29,100 in European morning hours, a level it has largely remained at since the past five days. The asset’s price volatility has reached a record low, showcasing a lack of new money entering the market.

Ether (ETH), bnb (BNB) and cardano (ADA) were similarly little changed. Dogecoin (DOGE) and Avalanche blockchain’s avax (AVAX) fell 1.5% to lead losses among major tokens.

Tokens of Meme coin-turned-serious project Shiba Inu (SHIB) seemed to stabilize in early European trading hours after traders took profits on a 25% rise last week.

As CoinDesk reported last week, developers of the project said they would connect all ecosystem projects to real-world digital identities, increasing trust among general users. This buoyed sentiment for the tokens, which were among the top gainers in the 2021 bull run.

Meanwhile, some watchers remained upbeat about the longer-term growth of crypto markets despite a generally dim response to PayPal USD (PYUSD).

New York-based payments giant PayPal said on Monday that it will soon make its PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin available to users, marking the first time a major financial company is issuing its own stablecoin.

Users can transfer PYUSD between PayPal and supported external digital wallets, use the tokens to pay for goods and services or convert any of PayPal’s supported cryptocurrencies to and from PYUSD.

“PayPal USD (PYUSD), a U.S. dollar stablecoin issued in collaboration with Paxos Trust Co., is a significant development in the digital finance landscape,” said Jeff Mei, COO of crypto exchange BTSE, in a Telegram message. “Signifying the growing convergence between traditional financial systems and the world of crypto, this news is definitely bullish for the crypto market.”

“If the regulators do welcome this with open arms, we might see more US fintech and payment companies proactively exploring digital currencies, and may even make a concerted shift toward new launches,” Mei said, adding successful launches may help instill confidence in the concept of stablecoins, especially following “last year’s setback Terra USD.

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At least four wallets from bitcoin’s early days have seen signs of activity in the past few days.

Wallets holding large amounts of bitcoin (BTC), that saw no activity for several years are suddenly showing signs of life, sparking conversations on Crypto Twitter about the possible reasons behind such moves.

Whale, a colloquial term used in crypto circles, refers to holders of large amounts of any tokens. Due to the size of their holdings whales can influence the price or sentiment around a token.

One such wallet, which was last active in 2012, moved over 400 bitcoin ($11 million) over the weekend, data shows. The bitcoin whale moved 360 bitcoin to one wallet, and 40 bitcoin to other wallets. The whale had purchased some 900 bitcoin in 2012, holding on to the asset ever since and seeing a nearly 40,000% gain on the initial investment.

The movement comes on the back of several other whales moving large quantities of bitcoin and ether (BTC) in the past few weeks.

Another whale wallet moved some 279 bitcoin earlier in April after over ten years of inactivity. The whale received 1,128 bitcoin between 2012 and 2013 when the price fluctuated between $12 and $195 – with the holdings valued at $31 million at the time of writing.

Ether holders are moving their tokens too. Last week, a participant in the ether initial coin offering (ICO) moved 1 ether (ETH) to another wallet after eight years of inactivity. The wallet holds over 2,356 ether – purchased at 31 cents apiece in the ICO – valued at over $4 million.

The identities of these whales are unknown, and none of them have communicated the reason behind their moves using any on-chain messages.

The silence has spurred speculations for the moves from Crypto Twitter, with reasons ranging from developers of the dark web site Silk Road getting access to their wallets to insiders in the know moving tokens ahead of bad news. With some even speculating that their wallet passwords have been cracked.

“We’re now at waay too many 10+ year wallets springing to life on multiple assets all of a sudden,” said CEHV partner Adam Cochrane on Twitter. “Unless these wallets are somehow related to Mt Gox cold storage, then some old wallet generator has to have been cracked.”

Cochrane’s reasoning may not be fully improprable, as old wallets have repeatedly been the target for hackers and online thieves.

Earlier this month, Taylor Monahan, founder of Ethereum services provider MyCrypto, flagged a massive “wallet draining operation” that seemed to affect whales and early holders of ether.

Mohanan estimated over 5,000 ether were drained from such wallets in the sophisticated attack. “My best guess is that someone has got themselves a fatty cache of data from 1 plus yr ago & is methodically draining the keys as they parse them from the treasure trove,” she tweeted at the time.

Such security concerns may have prompted the recent movement of bitcoin in whale wallets. But for now, everyone’s only guessing.

The post Bitcoin Whales Spook Crypto Twitter With Sudden Wallet Movements appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Open interest in CME futures has risen to the highest level since March 2022, indicating an influx of institutional traders to the crypto market.

Ethereum implemented the highly-anticipated Shapella hard fork, also known as the Shanghai upgrade, on April 12, reducing the risk of staking the blockchain’s native token, ether (ETH), by allowing withdrawals of locked coins at will. The pivotal event has galvanized institutional interest in the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value.

Since April 10, the number of active, or open, ether futures contracts trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has risen 39% to 6,248, according to official data. In U.S. dollar terms, open interest has increased by over 70% to $633 million. The tally reached a 12-month high of $675 million on Friday, Coinglass data show. Each contract has a value of 50 ETH and is quoted in US dollars per 1 ether.

Institutions typically prefer regulated products like CME futures that allow them to take exposure to digital assets without owning them. As such, CME futures tied to ether and bitcoin are widely considered a proxy for institutional activity.

“The CME’s market share has grown as institutions have been forced to evaluate the credit exposure underlying their collateral on crypto native exchanges,” said Jeff Anderson, a crypto trader and the former CIO at Folkvang Trading. “The activity surrounding Shapella has laid this bare with open interest at 12-month highs.”

Noelle Acheson, the author of the popular Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, voiced a similar opinion.

“The past few days have seen a strong inflow of institutional interest into ETH futures,” Acheson said. “USD open interest is now at its highest since March 2022, and just before the weekend, ETH futures open interest on the CME jumped over 80% in USD terms,” Acheson said.

An increase in open interest alongside a price rise represents an influx of new money into the market and confirms the uptrend. Ether’s price has risen 8% since the Shapella hard fork, CoinDesk data show.

“ETH is definitely experiencing idiosyncratic flows at the moment,” Vetle Lunde, a senior analyst at K33 Research said. “BTC OI is down 1.5% since April 10, whereas ETH OI is up 38.7% in the same period,” referring to open interest.

“We have been seeing similar flows in exchange-traded products (ETPs). BTC ETPs saw net outflows of 1.52% from April 10 to April 18 while ETH has seen net inflows of 0.77% in the same period,” Lunde added.

The futures basis, or the spread between prices in futures and spot markets, has widened, with the annualized rolling three-month premium doubling to over 4%. The combination of rising open interest and widening basis suggests the leverage has been allocated to the bullish side.

A rising premium often draws carry traders to the market. Carry trading involves setting up a market-neutral strategy by selling futures and simultaneously buying the underlying asset in the spot market to pocket the price differential between the two markets.

“The attractive basis has brought more traders to market,” Anderson said.

Activity on other exchanges has also picked up pace post-Shapella, suggesting institutions are not the only ones flocking to the market right now.

“Open interest has also been hitting record highs on Deribit, so it may not be conclusive evidence of institutional buying,” Dick Lo, the founder and CEO of quant-driven trading firm TDX Strategies, said.

The global ETH futures open interest, excluding CME, has increased by almost 22% to $6.62 billion, Coinglass data show. Open interest in Deribit-listed ETH futures has jumped 30% to $750 million, reaching the highest since the May 2021 record high of $778.6 million.

“Post the Shapella upgrade, unstaking withdrawals have been orderly and well-absorbed by the market and we are also seeing an uptick in staking from ETH holders. As ETH continues to be deflationary post-Merge and with the added attraction of staking yields which can be freely unstaked, we are seeing more bullish interest on ETH,” Lo said.

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Ethereum implemented the Shanghai upgrade early Thursday, opening withdrawals of more than 18 million ETH staked in the blockchain since late 2020.

Binance announced Thursday that users who staked ether (ETH) through the exchange will be able to redeem coins with their BETH holdings on a 1:1 basis starting from April 19, 08:00 coordinated universal time (UTC).

The announcement came hours after Ethereum implemented the highly-anticipated Shapella hard fork, also known as Shanghai upgrade, opening withdrawals of more than 18 million ETH staked in the blockchain since late 2020.

Binance said that user requests for withdrawals, once submitted, cannot be canceled and the process may be slow initially, requiring 15 days to several weeks for completion. Users will receive redeemed ether in their spot wallets and pending BETH tokens locked in pending ETH withdrawal requests won’t be eligible for staking rewards. BETH is a wrapped token issued by Binance which is 1:1 pegged to ETH on the Ethereum blockchain.

“The expected distribution date of redeemed ETH will be shown before users confirm their withdrawal requests. Users can refer to the most updated ETH distribution date at Staking History,” Binance said in an official announcement.

The exchange added that there would be a daily redemption quote for each user, considering the processing limitations on the Ethereum network and it is subject to change.

The post Binance To Support Ether Staking Withdrawals From April 19 appeared first on Crypto Insider.

Bitcoin’s dominance rate, its share of the crypto market, has risen to the highest in almost two years, while ether’s stagnates.

Ethereum’s highly anticipated Shanghai upgrade, also called the Shanghai-Capella hard fork, is set to occur Wednesday, after which users will have access to the $31 billion worth of ether (ETH) staked in the blockchain since December 2020.

The upgrade has been widely hailed as long-term bullish for Ethereum’s native token. Still, bitcoin (BTC), not ether, is outperforming the broader crypto market and becoming more dominant as the upgrade approaches.

Bitcoin’s dominance rate, which measures the largest cryptocurrency’s share of total market valuation, rose to 48.5% early Tuesday, the highest since July 2021, according to data tracked by charting platform TradingView. The metric has risen by 15% this year.

Ether’s dominance rate remains stagnant between 19% and 20%. That compares with a rise to 21% from 14% in the weeks before September’s pivotal upgrade known as the Merge. That technological overhaul replaced Ethereum’s at-the-time energy-intensive proof-of-work mechanism of verifying transactions with a proof-of-stake system and set the stage for Shanghai. Staking involves depositing coins in the blockchain to boost the network’s security and verify transactions in return for rewards.

Investor caution in pricing ether ahead of Shanghai stems from several factors, including concerns tokens unlocked after the upgrade will flood the market, and regulatory issues.

“The Shanghai upgrade will unlock over 18 million ether staked since late 2020. The market is worried that the unlocking may bring about a sell-off, causing uncertainty in the market,” Griffin Ardern, a volatility trader at crypto asset management firm Blofin.

While the upgrade will unlock over 18 million ETH, only partial withdrawals of 1.1 million ETH – the coins earned as staking rewards – will be withdrawable immediately.

Analysts have recently said that the partial withdrawals will take several days to process and the resulting selling pressure is unlikely to be significant.

“If all partial withdrawals are attempted just after the Shapella fork (which seems highly improbable), it would take around four and a half days for these ETH profits to enter the market,” Lucas Outumuro, head of research at IntoTheBlock, said in a note published Friday.

According to Outumuro, full withdrawals representing most of the ETH staked will take longer.

“It would take approximately 100 days for one-third of validators to exit if they all attempt to exit simultaneously, translating into $80-$100M worth of ETH being withdrawn per day. This would make up about 1% of ETH’s daily trading volume, though it is unlikely that all withdrawals will be sold,” Outumuro noted.

The market, however, is not convinced, as evident from ether’s underperformance relative to bitcoin and ether put options, or bearish bets, drawing higher prices than call options.

Regulatory concerns are probably also weighing on investors. In February, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleged that Ethereum staking services offered by centralized exchanges amount to selling unregistered securities in the U.S.

“ETH faces relatively higher regulatory risks. The SEC has repeatedly stated that ETH is a security rather than a commodity, which differs from the CFTC’s opinion and means additional risk, so investors understandably prefer BTC,” Ardern said. The CFTC is the agency governing the futures market.

Lastly, recent banking sector instability in the U.S. and the resulting sharp repricing of interest-rate expectations lower worldwide has benefited bitcoin. The cryptocurrency has evolved as a macro asset in the past three years and has a history of drawing haven bids during banking crises.

“BTC got the store-of-value narrative back after multiple U.S. banks failed in mid-March. Since then, BTC’s dominance rate has been rising,” Dubai-based crypto analyst and trader Reetika Malik said. Dominance rate is now at a “multiyear resistance” that has capped the upside in the past, meaning ether and other coins could soon outshine bitcoin, per Malik.

“By being concerned, the market is actually ‘pricing in’ already any selling pressure that we are likely to get from the Shanghai hard fork and the upgrade could actually become a ‘buy the news’ event,” Malik said. “BTC dominance chart is at a multiyear resistance as well as we speak. All the stars are aligning for a rotation into ETH.”

The post Bitcoin, Not Ether, Builds Crypto Market Dominance Ahead of Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade appeared first on Crypto Insider.

‘White hat’ hackers are working to recover more of the stolen funds as of Monday.

DeFi protocol SushiSwap has recovered $186,000 worth of ether (ETH) that a hacker drained from one of its users’ wallets following a $3.3 million exploit this weekend, according to a Sunday tweet from blockchain security firm Blocksec. The attack exploited a vulnerability in the ‘RouterProcessor2’ contract, which is used to conduct trade routing on the SushiSwap exchange.

BlockSec recovered the 100 ETH on Sunday by intercepting a transaction from prominent SushiSwap user @0xsifu’s wallet to the hacker’s wallet. BlockSec detected malicious activity during the attack attempt and was able to effectively rescue part of the funds. As such, SushiSwap lead developer Jared Grey said on Sunday that the protocol is working on a retrieval plan to secure the stolen funds and make affected users whole.

“Rest assured the team is working diligently to mitigate risk and retrieve user funds,” Grey wrote in an early Sunday message on Discord.

To date, 190 Ethereum addresses and over 2000 addresses on Layer 2 Arbitrum have approved the contract that facilitated this weekend’s SushiSwap exploit, according to Dune Analytics.

Sushi protocol’s native sushi (SUSHI) tokens have risen nearly 1% in the past 24-hours after dipping 3% on news of the exploit, as per CoinGecko. It is trading at $1.10 in early U.S. hours on Monday.

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