Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, reached $3,000 again in early trading today, marking 81% yearly growth, according to CoinGecko data.
In Tuesday's trading session, Ethereum briefly approached the $3,000 barrier, a peak last reached in April 2022, but was unable to climb much further.
Bulls persisted in their efforts to keep ETH above $3,000, but their activities have yet to have the intended result, with ETH presently trading below this level. This scenario has played out over the last three days, including today. At the time of writing, ETH had risen 1.93% in the last 24 hours to $2,977.
In an unexpected move, a massive whale decided to dump a large amount of ETH as the price made attempts at $3,000.
According to on-chain analytics provider Lookonchain, a whale has dumped 16,597 ETH worth $48.7 million at $2,934 on decentralized exchanges (DEX) in the past 24 hours. The whale's move raised some eyebrows in the crypto community, as it could indicate bearish sentiment or a profit-taking strategy.
It turned out to be a profit-taking strategy. Lookonchain reported that the whale made an approximate $5.5 million profit with this move, which saw millions worth of ETH deposited on exchanges.
According to Lookonchain, the whale bought 16,599 ETH worth $43.16 million from the OKX crypto exchange via five wallets on Jan. 12, when the price was $2,600 and later sold when the ETH price reached roughly $3,000.
Expectations are rising ahead of the highly anticipated Dencun hard fork, which is slated for March 13.
In preparation for this event, Ethereum developers have released Geth v.1.13.13, a minor update that fixes various issues linked to the forthcoming Cancun mainnet fork. Alsages (v1.13.13) significantly increase block production performance for Cancun blocks with blobs, as well as overall memory stability across all Geth nodes.