The price of eth to usd on Ethereum depends on a variety of factors. Its price at 10:00 GMT on November 5, 2023, stood at $1,850 (CoinMarketCap #CMC257), down 62% from the all-time high of $4,878 in November 2021. It is up 82% from the low of $1,015 in January 2023. Regulatory dynamics directly impact short-term volatility. In October 2023, the US SEC postponed the approval of VanEck Ethereum ETF (Case number SEC-2023-02891), and eth to usd fell by 7.3% within 3 hours. The EU’s MiCA Act, which categorizes ETH as a “utility token”, has powered its 24-hour rally by 9.1%. On-chain data also shows that whale addresses holding over 10,000 ETH (34% of the total supply) have accumulated 150,000 ETH (approximately 278 million US dollars) at the 1,800 US dollar support level, but the Coinbase order book also shows that there is a 520 million US dollar sell wall (Santiment #SANAPI) at 1,900 US dollars.
The technology upgrade and the supply and demand relationship are correlated with each other. After the Shanghai upgrade in April 2023, the staked ETH quantity increased from 15 million to 27 million (at a rate of 80% increase), but the withdrawal rate of validators reached 1.5 per second, resulting in a monthly increase of 0.8% in circulating supply (Glassnode #GN2023). Layer2 scalability solutions (such as Arbitrum’s daily trading volume exceeding 3 million transactions) have driven Gas fees down to 15 Gwei (approximately $1.5 per transaction), but the locked value (TVL) of DeFi has shrunk from a peak of $105 billion in 2022 to $43 billion (DefiLlama data). It has weakened the demand support for ETH as a Gas token.
The macroeconomic linkage was significant. On the Federal Reserve interest rate decision night in November, the US Dollar Index (DXY) rose to 107.1 (the year’s high), the market capitalization of the whole cryptocurrency market evaporated by 2.3%, and the 30-day correlation coefficient between eth to usd and the S&P 500 rose to 0.68 (the historical median of 0.45). The derivatives market reacted mercilessly. The funding rate of Binance’s ETH/USDT perpetual contract surged to 0.035% (long-dominant), and the open interest reached over 5.5 billion US dollars (Coinglass #CGDATA). But the leveraged liquidation risk is concentrated between $1,750- $1,950 (estimated margin call of $380 million).
Institutional behavior differentiation: The discount rate of Grayscale ETHE Trust has tightened from -60% to -20%. If BlackRock ETH Spot ETF is approved (application number S7-32-23), it would attract another $5.3 billion in funds (Bloomberg’s prediction model). However, the SEC’s move against Coinbase (charging it with carrying out ETH transactions as securities activities) caused a 25% weekly drop in the platform’s ETH/USD trading volume. On-chain activity indicators show that ETH network revenue (in US dollars) declined 31% year-over-year, but NFT trade volume increased 19% week-over-week (CryptoSlam data), resonating with the paradox of ecological evolution.
At the extremes, the collapse of Terra in 2022 caused market panic, with eth to usd declining 34% in a week to $1,070. However, sell pressure triggered by staking after the Shanghai upgrade in 2023 was balanced to some extent by institutional purchases (e.g., Jump Trading buying 120,000 ETH in a single day). Price volatility (30-day annualized) has decreased from 95% to 65%. Regulatory risks and technological progress coexist. Visa’s test of Ethereum’s automated payment stream (with an average daily settlement of 1.5 million US dollars) provides underlying support, but the SEC lawsuit risk (with a 55% chance of appeal) still pressures the price.
