Ether ETH Price Stays Near $1.9K As Shanghai Fork Approaches
The second largest cryptocurrency by market cap recently traded at $1,876, up 1.5% in the last 24 hours. Still, ETH is up over 4% in the past seven days as market participants eye Ethereum’s April 12 Shanghai hard fork, which aims to meet ETH withdrawals that have been set.
After rising the previous day, floating staking tokens flattened out on Thursday. LDO, the ticker symbol of the decentralized autonomous organization behind Lido, fell 3% on the day to hover around $2.50 on Thursday. The price drop came after a Lido protocol developer said in a Twitter Space on Thursday that Lido players can expect their ETH withdrawals “no earlier than early May.” Rocket Poll’s RPL token was down 2.9% to trade near $46, according to CoinGecko data.
How the Shanghai fork affects the price of ether remains uncertain with some observers expecting selling pressure, while others expect an increase amid renewed interest in the Ethereum platform. Gökçe Guven, co-founder and CEO of Kalder, said the ability to freely stake and unwind would “add a huge amount of utility” and in turn likely attract growing institutional interest.
“Larger institutional players often base whether they choose to gain exposure to a particular asset class on whether there is an opportunity to get a return,” Guven told CoinDesk in an email, adding: “Bet – but also, now, the opportunity to un-stake – giving that option now.”
And crypto research firm Delphi Digital’s research analysts said in a note on Thursday that Shanghai has created a timeline for stakers to withdraw their locked ETH holdings and that more investors will “prefer to stake ETH rather than keep their assets idle.”
“Liquid staking protocols, including Lido, are in the best position to capture these flows,” the analysts added.
Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, changed hands at around $28,100, down 0.1% from the same time on Wednesday. BTC has been bounded between $27,200 and $28,200 for much of the past three weeks.
The CoinDesk Market Index, which measures the overall performance of the crypto market, was recently down 1% from a day ago.
Brendon Sedo, a contributor to the tier 1 blockchain Core DAO, highlighted in an email to CoinDesk that with increasing demands for bitcoin, miners are increasing their profitability, leading to “increasing competition” among them “to secure the Bitcoin network.”
“It’s a positive reinforcement loop that we’re witnessing in real time,” he added.
Major stock indices turned green as investors awaited Friday’s US Labor Department non-farm payrolls (NFP) jobs report for March. The S&P 500 closed up 0.3 percent, while the technology-heavy Nasdaq rose 0.7 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) was flat.
The 2-year and 10-year Treasury yields were flat on Thursday, recently at 3.82% and 3.29%.
Stock markets will be closed on Friday to celebrate Good Friday.
“When a multitude of markets will be closed, we will see if traders will look to take advantage of the one market that trades 365 days a year,” Edward Moya, senior market analyst at forex market maker Oanda, wrote in an email on Thursday. . “Bitcoin remains near the upper limits of the trading range and could see a good chance to break the $30,000 level over the weekend when some of the derivatives are not actively traded.”
Moya added: “If the NFP report misses massively and supports the idea that the economy is in worse shape, we could see that give a big boost to crypto.”
