Destaking requests are at an all-time high on Ethereum (ETH). With the cryptocurrency just grazing its all-time high, this could suggest massive sales by holders.
Are ETH stakers planning to sell their cryptocurrencies?
The trend was noted by Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger. He explained on X that the queue to unstake ETH (unstaking queue) has reached an all-time high. This means that a large number of stakers are requesting to unlock their tokens.
According to data shared by Validatorqueue, the withdrawal queue reached more than 767,500 units on August 15. Entry requests totaled 324,500 units:
According to Charles Guillemet, this shows that a large amount of ETH is waiting to be withdrawn. The reason is certainly profit-taking:
This probably indicates that many holders want to either deploy their ETH in DeFi or sell it. With the price of ETH close to its own ATH, the latter option seems more likely.
It is interesting to note that while withdrawal requests have skyrocketed, staking requests have also increased. This apparent inconsistency can actually be explained by opposing strategies.
On the one hand, there are investors who want to take their profits and get out of the game. On the other hand, there are those who bought ETH during this latest bull run and now want to put it to work.
Proof of this craze, the time it takes to withdraw ETH has skyrocketed. While the wait was less than a day in recent weeks, it now stands at 13 days for withdrawals, according to data shared by Validatorqueue. According to Charles Guillemet, this does not pose any problem for the network, which is simply witnessing an increase in interest in its cryptocurrency:
From a network perspective, this does not pose a security issue. A significant amount of ETH is still being staked, and Ethereum’s reward mechanism automatically increases returns if the total amount of ETH staked falls below certain thresholds
In fact, this could even result in higher staking rewards for stakers who remain after their peers leave. But the selling trend could make it difficult for ETH to break its all-time high in the coming days. As a reminder, this was reached at $4,878 in November 2021.
