ETH continued to trade below $2,000 despite a bullish finale to the week. Fed fear and regulatory headwinds continue to be headwinds. On April 12, 2023, Ethereum will undergo a hard fork known as Shanghai, which would upgrade the protocol to Shapella. With this upgrade, the Ethereum network will see a number of improvements, including Shanghai and Capella Ethereum (EIP) improvement proposals.
According to a recent survey by OKX Exchange, 83% of respondents who are part of the ETH community are certain that Ethereum staking will increase over the next three months.
The unlocking of the ETH token could temporarily put pressure on the price of the altcoin, according to industry experts. However, ETH bulls are yet to react to the big event and even social sentiment needs to pick up.
Social sentiment remains unchanged
After rallying to an 8-month high, Ethereum sentiment remained mostly negative. When 13 million ETH is released from participation on April 12 after the completion of the ETH2.0 transition, bearish speculators predict that the price of ETH will plunge.
Santiment, a blockchain analytics platform, reports that since February, Ethereum net-weighted sentiment has been negative. ETH-weighted sentiment fell from 7.21 on Feb. 12 to -0.19 on April 7.
On the other hand, whales support the bullish thesis and the accumulation pattern among Ethereum whale investors supports the idea.
THE Saniment the data revealed that crypto whales with 1-100 million coins started buying when weighted sentiment (a technical indicator) started moving negatively. Whales increased their ETH holdings by 2.4 million between February 12 and April 7, adding a total of around $4.4 billion to their accounts.