Multi-year Ether accumulation has been growing in 2020 but things may soon change with the launch of staking.
More than half of Ethereum’s circulating supply has not moved in more than a year, with only 39.6% of Ether (ETH) changing hands over the past 12 months.
According to Glassnode’s ‘hodlwaves,’ which offers a chronological breakdown of the velocity of on-chain transactions, roughly 28% of Ether last moved between the past 12 and 24 months — comprising the largest segment of on-chain activity.
The data suggests that many whales spent 2019 accumulating Ether in advance of the project’s ETH 2.0 overhaul — for which phase 0 is expected to commence in the coming months, allowing users to stake their Ether for the first time.
Around 20% of tokens have not moved since before October 2017, with analysts watching to see if a percentage of these coins are moved into staking with the roll-out of phase 0.
~60% of all ETH hasn’t moved in 1+ years.
With eth2 phase 0 approaching, it’ll be interesting to see how much this percentage comes down by as Ethereum OG’s move their stash into staking.
I’m particularly curious to see if any of the coins in the 5+ years category move pic.twitter.com/9H38dYAHDq
— Anthony Sassano | sassal.eth ⛽ (@sassal0x) October 14, 2020
Phase 0’s coming launch appears to have sparked a recent increase in the short-term velocity of on-chain transfers, with the share of Ether moved in the past 24 hours increasing from less than 0.5% during January and February to average more than 1% in early September.
Weekly velocity also increased from 1.5% at the start of the year to tag 5% in both July and September, while monthly and quarterly transfers similarly increased steadily since June.
By contrast, Bitcoin’s short-term on-chain velocity has largely declined since the pre-halving hype and ‘Black Thursday’ crash of early 2020, with weekly transfers sliding from nearly 6% of supply in February to between 3.5% and 4% in September.