The mood in the crypto market is bearish. The bearish sentiment is driven by the Fed’s announcement of an imminent rise in interest rates. The geopolitical tensions arising out of possible conflict in Ukraine is also a contributory factor. The sentiment has driven ETH’s price to below $3000.
However, it is not all gloom for ETH. The TVL in DeFi is way above $200 billion. This is despite the fall from its previous high of $250 billion in TVL. The TVL highs also coincided with ETH’s highs of $4878 in end 2021.
KPMG also recently endorsed ETH as an investment asset. KPMG Canada added BTC and ETH to its balance sheet.
Clearly, ETH adoption is on the rise. The rise is seen not only among the big crypto players. Available data shows that addresses with 0.1 to 1 ETH are currently at unprecedented high levels. These levels have risen by 98% over just the last year. Over just the last month the number of addresses rose by 4,54% and now currently stand at 1.78 million ETH.
Not reflective of this mood is the NFT market. The market saw record activity for NFTs in the early part of 2022. NFT sales stood at 64,000 per day in mid January. The sales fell sharply thereafter and now stand at 24,000per day. In terms of monetary value the sales have fallen from $160 million to $75 million.
The activity on the ETH blockchain has also slowed down considerably.The price of ETH and the transaction fee too have dropped sharply.
The same holds true for gas fees too on the ETH network. The fees currently stands at 40 gwei. As recently as Jan they had touched 218 gwei. This low level is for the fast transactions where confirmation times less than 30 seconds are offered.
