• Ethereum breaks through multi-month resistance.
  • Shanghai upgrade passes without incident.

Ethereum is rallying hard and is back at levels last seen in September last year. The 2nd largest crypto by market cap broke sharply higher mid-week after the successful implementation of its latest upgrade. The Ethereum Shanghai upgrade took place this Wednesday without incident. This upgrade allows Ethereum network validators to withdraw their staked ETH (ETH), although the speed of withdrawal will be decided by individual staking pools. According to the Ethereum Roadmap, ‘staking withdrawals refer to transfers from a validator account on Ethereum’s consensus layer (the Beacon Chain), to the execution layer where it can be transacted with’. In short, any staked Ethereum that was locked up as ETH can now be changed back to ETH on a 1:1 basis and sold if required.

ETHEREUM (ETH/USD) WEEKLY PRICE CHART – APRIL 14, 2023

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Market fears that the upgrade would potentially release billions of dollars worth of Ethereum into the market have not come to pass as yet. While some ETH have been withdrawn and sold, some validator pools have already said that withdrawals will not happen immediately. Lido Finance, the largest staking pool, said a few weeks ago that withdrawals of ETH will not happen until May.