Ethereum Regains $1,700 as Merge Draws Nearer

Influencer David Gokhshtein, founder of Gokhshtein Media and CEO of the PAC Protocol, has taken to Twitter to draw the community's attention to the fact that the second biggest token, Ethereum, has risen to recapture the $1,700 level it lost on Aug. 19.

In the meantime, the number of large Ethereum wallets has been increasing as well, while the long-expected Merge upgrade is coming closer. Over the past week, Ethereum has surged by nearly 4%.

Merge date confirmed by ETH dev

A week ago, Ethereum developer Tim Beiko confirmed that the Merge is expected to occur on Sept. 15, as was announced before that. However, on Aug. 12, Vitalik Buterin said in a tweet that the exact date depends on the Ethereum hashrate. On August 24, a new date was announced - September 6.

As a reminder, the Merge will be the last step toward Ethereum switching to a proof-of-stake protocol, leaving proof-of-work and its massive energy consumption behind for Ethereum. Thus, ETH expected to become more scarce (as there will be no more miners, and coins will be minted more seldom) and more environmentally friendly, unlike the leading crypto, Bitcoin.

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ETH number of wallets with 100+ coins soars high

Glassnode analytics company has reported that several major records have been set by the Ethereum ecosystem over the past 24 hours. In particular, middle-sized investors keep flowing in, and now the amount of wallets holding more than 100 Ethers has reached a 16-month high of 45,615.

Similarly, the number of non-zero ETH wallets has demonstrated a rise to a new all-time high of 85,410,502.

📈 #Ethereum $ETH Number of Addresses Holding 100+ Coins just reached a 16-month high of 45,615

View metric:https://t.co/FbjiMFLThn pic.twitter.com/IEhE8Y7rL6

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) August 25, 2022

Santiment on-chain data aggregator has tweeted that the balance between the amount of Ethereum held in the top 10 exchange wallets and non-exchange ones has been leveling up gradually ahead of the Merge, and the gap is closing.

Since May 10, according to a recent tweet, the 10 biggest ETH wallets that do not belong to centralized exchanges have dropped 11% of the Ethereum they held previously. As for exchange-based wallets, they have increased their stashes by a whopping 78%.

🔄 The gap between #Ethereum's top 10 largest non-exchange addresses & exchange addresses is closing as we head toward the #merge in 3 weeks. Since May 10th, these top non-exchange $ETH addresses hold 11% less coins, & top exchange addresses hold 78% more. https://t.co/k5OlJ1hG3D pic.twitter.com/XOAVhXaKPG

— Santiment (@santimentfeed) August 24, 2022

Mark Cuban remains "super bullish" on ETH

A "converted" crypto supporter billionaire and investor Mark Cuban has recently stated in an interview that he remains "super bullish" on Ethereum in the long term. His bullish forecast is again connected with the upcoming Merge event.

He believes that it will increase Ethereum's utility, thus strengthening the bullish case of the second biggest blockchain platform and its native token, ETH.

As was mentioned above, the Merge is going to significantly reduce Ethereum's consumption of energy – by a factor of 1,000, in particular. However, Cuban refrained from making any particular price predictions as he does not know how the ETH rate will react to the Merge in the short term.

Aside from Ethereum, Mark Cuban also supports Bitcoin and Dogecoin. The Mavericks team that he owns sells tickets and merchandise for DOGE in their online store. He holds DOGE himself, but the size of his stash is not too big.