Key Points
- Ethereum’s price indicates a potential bullish rebound amidst a bearish crypto outlook.
- Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, proposes a pathway to reduce the minimum staking requirement to 1 ETH.
Despite the current bearish outlook in the crypto market, which has led to a 3 percent decrease in total market valuation to approximately $2.1 trillion, Ethereum’s price is leading the major altcoins in a bearish trend.
The high-capacity altcoin, with a fully diluted valuation of around $282 billion and a daily average traded volume of about $22 billion, witnessed a decline of over 4.2 percent in the past 24 hours, trading at about $2,346.
Potential Bullish Pattern for Ethereum
Contrary to popular expectations, Ethereum’s price could be forming a potential bullish pattern as it enters the fourth quarter. From a technical standpoint, the Ether price is retesting a critical support level, which could surprise many bears.
The top-tier altcoin is forming a potential reversal pattern characterized by an inverted head and shoulders (H&S) shape along with a bullish divergence in the daily Relative Strength Index (RSI).
However, if the Ether price consistently closes below the support level of around $2,121, the bullish reversal pattern will be invalidated. This could lead to bears pushing the Ether price below $2k towards $1,954.
Nevertheless, the former scenario is more likely as the crypto market is expected to rebound and follow Gold and major stock indexes. Upcoming US elections, changes in the global economic outlook, and increasing geopolitical tensions could serve as major bullish factors for the entire crypto industry.
Reducing Ethereum’s Staking Requirement
According to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, the current threshold of 32 ETH to achieve a validator position is high enough to prevent mainstream decentralization. Therefore, Buterin has suggested a pathway to reduce the minimum staking requirement to 1 ETH in the future.
Buterin believes that core developers should work on increasing the bandwidth requirement in exchange for lowering the overall staking requirements to 16 or 24 ETH. As the Ether core developers work on the PeerDAS upgrade and the Orbit SSF, Buterin emphasized that the ultimate goal will be to lower the staking limit to 1 ETH.
Ethereum Whales and Market Activity
The past few weeks have been challenging for the Ethereum market as on-chain data shows whales have been actively selling. The Ethereum Foundation has sold nearly $10 million year-to-date to cater for its expenses, and the US spot Ether ETFs have registered significant cash outflows recently.
Since the approval of the US spot Ether ETFs, more than $557 million have been liquidated, led by Grayscale’s ETHE. Earlier today, an Ethereum ICO wallet sold around 19K ETH, worth around $47 million, thus dampening the bullish sentiment.
