ETH still above $2k after post-Shanghai technical pullback

Last week, we offered a preview of Ethereum’s next big upgrade, called ‘Shanghai’.

This latest major development to the Ethereum blockchain allowed Ether owners who have staked their tokens since Dec. 2020 to begin withdrawals starting Wednesday, April 12^th.

Also in last week’s article, we pointed to the uncertainty surrounding how Ether prices may react to such a pivotal event: “whether there would be fresh incoming bids for the unlocked Ether that drive prices even higher”.

 

Well, now we have the answer.

Following the “Shanghai” upgrade, Ether prices surged by up to 13%, breaching the psychologically-important $2k mark for the first time since August – a milestone we had also earmarked in last week’s article.

Though there have been some of the expected withdrawals post-Shanghai, industry watchers say those exits have been primarily the withdrawing of rewards for staking, as opposed to withdrawing the staked Ether tokens.

And even then, such withdrawals have been muted, with investors then rotating out of centralized platforms and into decentralized applications such as Lido, Rocket Pool, and Frax Ether.

However, prices have since seen a pullback, apparently due to technical factors as Ether’s 14-day relative strength index eases away from “overbought” conditions.

Despite paring its latest surge, Ether remains above that psychologically-important $2,000 line while still trading around an 11-month high.

 

Ether’s price gains over the past week still stands around 10% at the time of writing, far outperforming Bitcoin which has a 0.2% decline over the same period.

The world’s largest crypto by market cap is struggling around the psychologically-important $30k level, and may continue to slog for further gains given that US banking turmoil appears to have subsided and bank deposits are improving.

Ether’s “Shanghai” upgrade, also now labelled as “Shapella”, has indeed marked a notable maturing of the world’s most commercially-important blockchain.

Still, it has more to do to erase the 57% gap between current prices and its all-time high posted back in November 2021.