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The price of Ether is subdued at around $2,500, following the 60% drop in its price from the all-time high of $4,380 last month. Ether actually more than doubled its price in just over a fortnight to hit this peak. During the recent sell-off, Eth went as low as $1,725 on Coinbase. Much like the weakness in the USD market, ETH is also feeling the woes against BTC. ETH/BTC started its uptrend on March 29 when it was around 0.03. After two and a half months of a continuous uptrend, climbing to 0.082, a level last seen in May 2018, ETH/BTC topped out on May 15. The subsequent sell-off during which ETH dropped harder than Bitcoin, as it usually happens - the opposite of a bull market where Eth price typically outperforms Bitcoin, ETH/BTC fell to 0.055. As of writing, ETH/BTC is down at under 0.063 after climbing to 0.075 momentarily as Bitcoin leads the cryptocurrency space in strength in the current “crab” market, with El Salvador declaring it a legal tender acting as a likely catalyst. Bitcoin leading the market is seen as a bullish scenario for the rest of the market because as long as Bitcoin maintains its strength and pumps while altcoins do not, the money will eventually rotate into them and pump them higher as we saw during the end of 2020 and into 2021.
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The lack of price action has the Ethereum exchanges inflow volume reaching its lowest volume since November 15, 2020. Akin to this absence of activity, the fees on the second-largest network have fallen to a single digit, last seen before the DeFi summer. The standard gas fee is currently a mere 5 gwei, as per ETHgas station, which skyrocketed to 2,000 gwei briefly for the first time ever during the market sell-off. Average fees have gone down to $2.7, even lower than Bitcoin’s average of about $5, as per Blockchair. The total daily fee on Ethereum is also on a downtrend, recording about 3.7 million on June 13, last seen in December, down from 117.2 million on May 11, according to Coin Metrics. Amidst the lack of momentum, the popular Ethereum wallet MetaMask is launching its services for institutions to help them access and engage with DeFi. With the decentralized finance ecosystem reaching past $40 billion, cryptocurrency funds, family offices, and financial institutions are “increasingly” seeking exposure to space, and through MetaMask Institutional, the company aims to enable funds to swap tokens, borrow, lend, invest, and interact with DeFi protocols and applications using its interface. Prior to its commercial launch, ConsenSys is collaborating with a select group of partners, custodians, and professional trading firms to give feedback throughout beta testing. “Ideal partners have customers already deploying capital into DeFi protocols,” it noted.