The largest crypto, Ethereum, has started to recover in price after the setback it faced last week. Following that, a higher local low was established on Thursday, which ultimately led to a surge in prices.
At the time of writing, Ethereum was trading at $1,777 on the FTX platform, with a $17.5 million daily trading volume. The week’s gain for Ethereum is 12%.
Prior local resistance at $1,680 was quickly surmounted, leading to a final rebound to a noteworthy swing high at $1,780.
Recent price action, suggests that the cryptocurrency market is following the movement of stocks once more. Risk assets have continued to rise due to unexpectedly falling bond yields over the previous week.
Given the Federal Reserve’s strongly hawkish stance, it appears that the market is currently accounting for the chance that inflation may decrease more swiftly than expected.
Even though the price of bitcoin has been trading sideways with little rebound and low volatility over the past week, Glassnode’s most recent data shows that there is still significant investor interest in trading BTC futures markets and retaining their ETH bags.
Despite the minor upward price movement, Glassnode asserts that the Bitcoin derivatives market has a low directional bias, suggesting that investors are trading conservatively.
Meanwhile, investors are more upbeat about Ethereum (ETH) because withdrawals from exchanges “are relatively minor” compared to the rising demand for the token as the Merge date draws near.
For the first time, investors are currently more interested in trading Ethereum derivatives than bitcoin, with $6.6 billion in ETH traded versus $4.8 billion in BTC.
Additionally, this indicator reveals that the open interest in ETH options is close to exceeding the all-time high (ATH) milestone set in late November 2021, when the price of ETH was $4,900.
Given that the vast majority of investors are placing positive wagers on values between $2,200 and $5,000, the Ethereum Merge has significantly influenced the demand for ETH and the rise in its price. Ethereum should have successfully switched to Proof of Stake once the Merge is finished without changing the data of the initial Proof of Work chain.
