With the successful Shapella (Shanghai-Capella) hard fork and the beginning of the active withdrawal of staked ETH, the price of the main altcoin rose to its highest value in the last 11 months.
According to CoinGecko, as of 12:00 a.m. (GMT+3), April 17, the price of ETH stands at $2,095. It dipped slightly in the morning hours, though prior to that, it exceeded $2,100 for the first time in 11 months, hitting $2,134 momentarily. The overall rise over the last seven days is 12.5%.
The growth of ETH started amid anticipation of the Shapella hard fork and sharply increased after the news of its successful implementation. Recall that one of the key aspects of the Shanghai and Capella hard forks, which took place almost in parallel and are referred to as Shapella for convenience, was to activate withdrawals of staked ETH.
Analysts made various assumptions about the volume of funds that would be withdrawn from staking in the first week. In fact, ~1.04 million ETH has been withdrawn from staking since the update. Meanwhile, the total amount of staked funds exceeds 17.97 million ETH, and the hype around withdrawals is waning.
Analysts predict that the reverse process will soon begin and the amount of staked ETH will begin to increase, eventually surpassing pre-Shapella levels. If this prediction proves to be correct and the volume of a free asset in the market decreases, it’ll further raise its price, unless there are any global market shocks.
The ETH value was also boosted by the market excitement around the asset, with the trading volume more than doubling for a few days after the update compared to April 9-10. The situation was influenced by the market trend and the growth of BTC, which exceeded the level of $30,000 on April 11, setting a new high of 2023.
