Ethereum Hits Peak of $1,700 as Investors Add 1.88 Million ETH Since November: Report

On Thursday, the second biggest crypto asset, Ethereum, pushed over 3% up and briefly managed to surpass the $1,700 level last seen about a year ago, also on a short timespan.

Santiment on-chain data agency has tweeted that this rise has partly been provoked by the large amounts of Ethereum that was recently accumulated by whale and shark addresses.

The analysts team of the company has reminded the audience that the ETH price is now "within a striking distance of a 5-month high," and it is so far at the highest level since the Merge upgrade that occurred on Sept. 15 and made the Ethereum blockchain switch from the proof-of-work consensus protocol to the proof-of-stake one — the event that the community had looked forward to for a long time. It has made ETH more environmentally friendly as it will consume less electricity now.

🐳🦈 #Ethereum is above $1,700 once again, and the #2 market cap asset is within striking distance of a 5-month high. $ETH prices are at their highest since the #merge, and shark & whale addresses holding 100-100K $ETH still hold nearly 47% of the supply. https://t.co/RJLjgqYSUl pic.twitter.com/JYErD5Vt02

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) February 17, 2023

Bitcoin maximalists keep insisting, though, that this has made Ethereum even more centralized than it had been before.

As for the aforementioned sharks and whales, Santiment shared that since November last year, these wallets that contain between 100 and 100,000 ETH have accumulated another 1.88 million Ether.

Now, they are holding a total of 47% of the circulating Ethereum supply.

At the time of writing this, Ethereum has pulled back a little and is changing hands at $1,693, according to data provided by CoinMarketCap.