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First Mover Americas: Ether's Shanghai Rumble

The latest price moves in crypto markets in context for April 12, 2023.

Updated Apr 12, 2023, 3:35 p.m. Published Apr 12, 2023, 3:03 p.m.

This article originally appeared in First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily newsletter putting the latest moves in crypto markets in context. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every day.

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Bitcoin (BTC) slipped under the $30,000 level in early European hours on Wednesday, with overall market capitalization falling 1.2% in the past 24 hours. Ether (ETH) traded just over $1,860, down 3%, leading the drop among major tokens. Ether dipped ahead of the Ethereum network's major upgradetaking place later today at 22:27 UTC (6:27 p.m. ET). Exchanges liquidated just over $30 million worth of leveraged futures bets during Wednesday's price drop, of which, more than 90% were longs or bullish bets. In addition to the Ethereum network upgrade, traders were likely also taking profits ahead of the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) report for March, which is due at 8:30 a.m. ET.

A report by blockchain analytics firm Glassnode estimates at least $300 million worth of selling pressure after the Shanghai upgrade today. “We estimate a total of 170K ETH intended to be sold after the upgrade,” Glassnode said in a report. “We project that only 100K ETH ($190M) of the total accumulated rewards will be withdrawn and sold.” Glassnode said the estimate was made based on a “50% withdrawal credential update, our segmentation of depositors, and assumptions regarding investor conviction, and profitability” by using wallet behavior, period of staking and presence of liquid staking derivative products, such as Lido.

Tron’s TRX token has been delisted by Binance.US. This comes weeks after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Tron's Justin Sun over allegations of selling and airdropping unregistered securities, fraud and market manipulation involving the TRX token. TRX dropped 6.4% on the news, according to CoinDesk market data. Binance.US says trading for TRX will end on April 18.

Chart of the Day

The chart shows weekly changes in the total crypto market valuation since 2018.
On Tuesday, market valuation surpassed the $1.2 trillion mark, ending weeks of consolidation and hitting the highest since June.
The move higher is reminiscent of the bull revival seen four years ago.
"The April-May 2019 framework is playing right on cue with the crypto finally breaking the $1.15T on the global MCAP index after 26 days of battle," Decentral Park Capital's portfolio manager Lewis Harland said.
"This break could echo the April-May 2019 period when crypto tried to break above the $180B mark for 35 days before gaining 100% 49 days afterward (red)," Harland added.

Lyllah Ledesma

Lyllah Ledesma is a CoinDesk Markets reporter currently based in Europe. She holds a master's degree from New York University in Business and Economics and an undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of East Anglia. Lyllah holds bitcoin, ether and small amounts of other crypto assets.

Omkar Godbole

Omkar Godbole is a Co-Managing Editor on CoinDesk's Markets team based in Mumbai, holds a masters degree in Finance and a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) member. Omkar previously worked at FXStreet, writing research on currency markets and as fundamental analyst at currency and commodities desk at Mumbai-based brokerage houses. Omkar holds small amounts of bitcoin, ether, BitTorrent, tron and dot.