TLDR 📃

• Ethereum earnings are soaring, with ~$50M in profit in just two days!
• Staking is thriving as new staking deposits reach an all-time high after the Shanghai upgrade.
• Somebody with a track record of selling at the top has been selling large amounts of ETH. 
• ETH is ranging between $1,850 and $2,000, with a potential break to $1,400 if $1,850 is breached.
• The DeFi scene is quiet but NFTs are making a comeback, fueled by memecoins and new projects.

Disclaimer: Not financial or investment advice. Any capital-related decisions you make is your full responsibility.

Ethereum earnings are HIGH 💵

Now, if you take a peek at earnings (you can do it right here), you might be surprised to find that only a few crypto projects are truly profitable. Ethereum happens to be one of them. In fact, it’s made about $50M in profit in the last two days! Pretty impressive, huh?

The state of staking 💾

New staking deposits

Yes, we’ll continue to brag for being right in saying that the Shanghai upgrade would be a positive development for Ethereum and not a bearish one. The upgrade rolled out smoothly and staking remained fully functional once withdrawals were enabled.

Just look at the chart (above)  –  new staking deposits hit an all-time high! 👀

Staking's looking great, with deposits outpacing withdrawals. Last week, 15% of the supply of ETH was staked, and we predicted it could reach 30% or more. Now it's already at 16%! At this rate we’ll hit our prediction by summer's end.

But people are withdrawing. Should we worry? 

Withdrawers aren’t who you think they are

It’s normal to see a certain amount of turnover in any staked crypto, but as long as deposits keep growing, it’s no big deal. 

Last week, 2.5% of staked ETH was queued for withdrawal, and now it's just 0.9%.

We like to track withdrawals, as that can reveal important insights. For instance, if a large portion of withdrawn ETH comes from Lido, that would be a red flag and we would want to investigate.

So where are these withdrawals coming from?

Right now, 62.8% of the ETH waiting to be withdrawn is from Binance, Kraken, and Coinbase. It appears that centralised exchanges are losing market share to decentralised ones.

Who's selling all that ETH? 🧸

Have you ever looked into the Ethereum Foundation's selling habits? Are they good traders? Right now they're holding 320,000 ETH (you can check out their address here). They've got bills to pay in fiat currency, so they sell a bit of ETH now and then.

But here's the thing – they've been pretty spot-on at selling near the top, and they just sold 15,000 ETH yesterday. We don't let the Ethereum Foundation's moves dictate our investments, but when history shows us a pattern, we pay attention.

Price analysis 📉

ETH had a rally on Friday, trying to push past $2,000, but couldn't quite make it. Now it's hanging out between $1,850 and $2,000 – which is perfect for range traders. Just long at $1,850 and short at $2,000, easy peasy! Buy $1,850 and short $2,000.

For the rest of us, it's a bit dull. But hey, a breakout is bound to come sooner or later. If we had to guess (and we've put our money where our mouth is), we'd say ETH likely breaks below $1,850 and drops to $1,600 first, then maybe even down to $1,400. That's where we'd be happy buyers.

Of course, if ETH manages to flip $2,000 from resistance to support, we'll have to rethink our strategy. But right now, that doesn't seem likely.

Ethereum ecosystem 🌐

DeFi (Decentralised Finance)

Here's a handy table for a quick peek at the DeFi industry 👇🏼

Things in the DeFi world seem pretty quiet right now – any change under 10% is practically nothing in the crypto world. Instead, people are focusing on memecoins and NFTs.

But before we dive into those, let's check out a snippet from our Layer-2 digest:

”Arbitrum was a huge success in September 2021, remember? But it turned out there was a problem. Most of the projects on layer 2 were meme coins like ArbiNyan, which attracted lots of attention and money but were unsustainable. And then there were rug pulls, sneaky scams that tricked investors into parting with their cash.

History may be repeating itself as zkSync finds itself in a similar situation. The highly anticipated decentralised exchange Merlin turned out to be a scam, stealing $1.8M from investors.” Read more by clicking here!

NFTs

Oh NFTs, you bored us for weeks and now you are back! We missed you and your volatility.

CryptoPunks are now worth over 60 ETH, while Azuki and Doodles have both skyrocketed by more than 50%. And Miladys? They’re nearing a solid 4 ETH floor price. This is all thanks to the memetic value brought by PEPE’s meteoric 3,000%-in-two-weeks rise and Blur’s new Blend product, which lets you access top-notch NFT collections easily without breaking the bank.

Keep an eye on token launches from Memeland and Azuki  –  people are already talking about them. And check out the one mint we believe will be attracting a lot of hype here.

Cryptonary’s take 🧠

Alright, so here's the lowdown on Ethereum:

It's making some serious cash with its earnings, and staking is going through the roof with new deposits hitting all-time highs after the successful Shanghai upgrade. But let's not forget that the Ethereum Foundation has been selling quite a bit of ETH. They’re notorious for selling the top.

ETH's price is bouncing between $1,850 and $2,000. This is fantastic for range traders, but we might see it dip to $1,600 or even $1,400 if it breaks the $1,850 mark. So stay alert and be ready for price shifts.

DeFi has been a bit quiet lately. But NFTs are making a big comeback thanks to memecoins and some cool new projects. You can read all about those in our NFT Digest.