Ether near $1,900 as Shanghai fork approaches

The second-biggest crypto currency by market capitalization was trading at $1,876, off 1.5 per cent during the last 24 hours

Ether (ETH) dropped under $1,900 on Thursday a day after exceeding this mark and reaching its highest level since August 2022.

Ether was recently trading at $1,876, off 1.5 per cent during the last 24 hours. Still, ether has advanced more than 4 per cent during the last seven days as markets focus on Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork on April 12, which intends to address staked ethereum withdrawals.

After increasing the day earlier, liquid staking tokens flattened on Thursday. LDO, the governance token of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind Lido, declined 3 per cent for the day to stay near $2.50 on Thursday. The drop in price came after a Lido protocol developer said in a Twitter Space Thursday that Lido stakers can expect their ethereum withdrawals no earlier than early May. Rocket Poll’s RPL token was 2.9 per cent lower to near $46, as per CoinGecko data.

How the Shanghai fork impacts the price of ether remains uncertain, with some observers anticipating selling pressure while others anticipating a surge amid fresh interest in the Ethereum platform. Gokce Guven, the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Kalder, said the capability to freely stake and unstake will add a huge quantity of utility and in turn possibly draw rising institutional interest.

Crypto research company Delphi Digital’s research analysts stated in a note Thursday that Shanghai has created a timeline for stakers to withdraw their locked-up ether holdings, and that more investors will choose to stake ether instead of keeping their assets idle.

Bitcoin (BTC), the biggest crypto currency in terms of market value, was trading at nearly $28,100, 0.1 per cent lower from Wednesday, same time.