Number of Addresses Holding At Least One Ethereum Reaches New High, ETH 2.0 Deposit Hits $30 Billion

The widespread adoption of Ethereum (ETH) has continued to grow, as the price of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization recovers from the January market crash.

It is no longer news that whale investors have used the recent market dip to increase their Ethereum holdings, as thousands of ETHs have been purchased and transferred from exchanges to unknown wallet addresses. 

While whale traders have been on an ETH accumulation spree, small traders do not want to be left out of the Ethereum adoption trend. 

Fresh data suggests that the number of small-time investors holding at least one ETH has set a new all-time record, a move that bodes well for the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

Glassnode data suggests that the number of addresses holding at least one ETH has reached a new all-time high (ATH). 

? #Ethereum $ETH Number of Addresses Holding 1+ Coins just reached an ATH of 1,423,855

Previous ATH of 1,421,792 was observed on 05 February 2022

View metric:https://t.co/IuKpD49gML pic.twitter.com/VmPCUzqVSh

— glassnode alerts (@glassnodealerts) February 9, 2022

At press time, the total number of such addresses now stands at 1,423,856, surpassing the previous ATH of 1,421,792 recorded on February 5, 2022. 

Ethereum is becoming more popular by the day following the massive interest in several niches of the network, including decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

Both sectors have continued to lure retail and institutional investors as billions of dollars flow in and out of related platforms. 

Interestingly, investors are either holding on to their ETH or looking for opportunities to increase their holdings in the cryptocurrency as analysts have predicted that the price will soar tremendously in the near future. 

Last month, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest predicted that the price of a unit of ETH will hit $160,000 by 2030. 

Such predictions are among the reasons the number of investors holding at least one unit of ETH has been steadily increasing.

ETH 2.0 Beacon Chain Deposit Hits $30 Billion

Despite the massive interest in Ethereum, developers are still seeking ways to make the network more efficient in order to onboard more users in the coming years. 

One of the ways developers are planning to achieve this feat is to fully launch Ethereum 2.0, an initiative that will scale the network’s performance by adopting a proof-of-stake (PoS) algorithm. 

In order to achieve this feat, validators are required to stake 32 ETH into a deposit contract for the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain. 

Ether Scan data shows that the deposit contract now holds 9,371,474 ETH, worth nearly $30 billion, at the time of writing, 

Last year, we reported that a total of 7.7 million ETHs were deposited in the Ethereum 2.0 smart contract.