During April 15th alone, stakers withdraw almost 400,000 ETH.
Ether's value has surged past $2,100 for the first time in 11 months following the Shanghai hard fork, with over 1 million Ether (ETH), valued at $2.1 billion, withdrawn from Ethereum's Beacon Chain in just four days.
According to the beaconcha.in April 15th recorded the highest number of withdrawals, amounting to 392,800 ETH. In total, since the upgrade, stakers withdrew 1.03 million Ether.
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It is believed that nearly 87% or 469,000 of the 540,000 active validators can withdraw their staked Ether. The Ethereum community had been divided on Shanghai's impact on Ether's price, but the first four days showed around a 10% increase.
Lachlan Feeney, CEO of blockchain consulting and development firm Labrys, claimed that the figures are hardly surprising, as many validators are re-staking Ether onto the Beacon Chain.
Much of the stake that has been withdrawn over the last few days is actually going straight back into The Beacon Chain as validators are looking to compound their interest. So much so that net stake is currently increasing.
Feeney mentioned that the current macroeconomic climate allowed early stakers to liquidate their crypto after waiting nearly 30 months. However, he believes that the Shanghai hard fork will ultimately boost the amount of staked Ether.
Because Shapella (also known as Shanghai) is a massive de-risking event, over the medium to long-term more, not less, ETH will be staked. We anticipate that in the not too distant future, we will reach a record high of Ether being staked.
Markus Thielen, Head of Research at digital asset platform Matrixport, noted that the closure of crypto exchange Kraken's staking services might have contributed to these higher figures.
It appears largely due to the Kraken's staking business being unwound. This will only have a temporary effect as we are also seeing a significant demand from investors who now are able to stake with more visibility on the liquidity of staked positions.
Thielen expects un-staked Ether from Kraken to be "recycled" back into the Beacon Chain through other entities.
Despite anticipating positive price action to cool off this week due to increased selling pressure, Thielen believes Shanghai will ultimately attract more institutional investors to stake ETH.
Moreover, it appears that the success of the Shanghai upgrade and other factors had positively impacted the whole crypto industry. On April 17th, for the first time in almost a year and a half, the crypto fear and greed index reached 69, showing increasing greed among crypto investors.
At the time of writing, Ether (ETH) retails for $2,115.27, recording a 0.25% price decrease.
