Three market catalysts suggest that Ethereum's native token Ether (ETH) is well-positioned to reach $4,000 this month.
Internet users' interest in Ethereum's upcoming network upgrade, dubbed "the Merge," surged substantially in the week ending April 2, Google Trends' data shows.
Searches for the keyword "Ethereum Merge" reached a perfect Google Trends score of 100 on a 12-month timeframe with most traffic coming from the U.S., Singapore, Canada, and Australia.
Merge, also called ETH 2.0, refers to the Ethereum network's full transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) from Proof-of-Work (PoW), a development that had been touted as one of the major catalysts behind Ether's rebound rally in recent weeks — from nearly $2,500 on March 14 to over $3,500 this week.
The bullish outlook stems from Merge's proposal to reduce Ether's issuance rate, leading to a possible supply peak in the total number of ETH in circulation. With PoW mining, ETH's supply has grown by 3% every year.
The spike in public interest for "Ethereum Merge" suggests there is growing buzz among crypto investors and traders as the Ethereum upgrade nears. Last month's launch of Kiln is the final public testnet before the whole network transitions to PoS sometime this year.
$ETH I think we see a drive towards $4000 soon as long as price action remains above this support @ $3400.Likely a healthy retrace after a test of 4kThen into a aggressive move to new ATH's for merge pic.twitter.com/ZDvReVPAWP
At the same time, ETH supply downtrend on crypto exchanges continues.
Notably, net Ether reserves across all the exchanges have dropped to their lowest levels since August 2018, suggesting that traders have been withdrawing ETH en masse to hold them long-term or to stake them across
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