Ether held on crypto exchanges has declined over the last six months as the price of Ether has held steady, while holders are continuing to participate in staking, according to Santiment.
In an X post on Tuesday, Santiment shared data from Sanbase showing that after July saw the highest amount of Ether (ETH) on exchanges with 12.31 million tokens, the amount has steadily declined to 8.15 million.
Santiment analysts predict that the amount of Ether on exchanges could continue to decline as price movements remain muted and more ETH is sent for staking. Ether has been drifting between $2,801 and $3,034 in the last seven days, according to CoinGecko.
โAs staking continues to be of strong interest, especially while markets move sideways, exchange supply will continue to shrink as well,โ they said.
Ether staking entry queue has a 63-day wait
Blockchain explorer Ethereum Validator Queue estimates the entry queue is jam-packed as of Thursday, with 3.6 million tokens lined up to be staked and a forecasted 63-day wait, compared with 44,448 tokens waiting to exit and an 18-hour wait.ย
The Ethereum network has a limit on how many validators can enter and exit staking per epoch to protect network stability.ย
The total amount of staked Ether is over 36 million, representing roughly 29% of the supply, according to beaconcha.in and Dune Analytics, up from 35 million in June.
Ethereum is a proof-of-stake network that requires validators to stake the token to help secure the network. Unstaking is often seen as a sign that validators are looking to free up Ether for sale, while staking could be seen as a sign of confidence in the asset, as it requires it to be locked up.
Tom Leeโs Bitmine has 2.5 million ETH staked
Bitmine is committing more of its treasury to staking. Data analytics firm Lookonchain reported Bitmine staked another 250,912 Ether from the companyโs stash.
In total, Lookonchain estimates Bitmine has now staked more than 2.5 million tokens, representing about 61% of its total holdings.
Related: Ethereum L1 transactions hit 2.2M a day; each costs about 17 cents
The Ether treasury firm started staking its stash in December, with a transfer of 74,880 Ether.
Some stakers are accumulating Ether
Some Ether stakers also appear to be buying up more of the supply. Lookonchain said four staking wallets withdrew over 26,000 tokens from Binance on Tuesday and speculated they were accumulating more tokens.ย
The trading volume for Ether on CoinMarketCap on Thursday was around $23.54 billion, down from more than $27 billion a day earlier.
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