Shanghai, an important upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain, has been a success. Against the backdrop of the news, the ETHUSD rate rose by 10% per day, breaking the psychological level of $2,000. As of Friday morning, ETH is trading above $2,100, something that has not happened since May 2022. Since the beginning of the year, ETHUSD has risen in price by about 77% (for comparison, Bitcoin, by about 86%).

In the long run, the Shanghai (also known as Shapella) upgrade has the advantage of providing more freedom to invest. But in the short term, a collapse in the value of ETH could occur, as investors got the opportunity to withdraw funds from staking. According to on-chain metrics, after the update, more than 1 million ETH tokens were requested for withdrawal. “[This] is much lower than what was previously expected,” Matt Maximo, an analyst with Grayscale, told CNBC.

The growth of the ETHUSD rate was also facilitated by the lower US dollar index — it fell to the lows of the current year after the release of March producer price index on Thursday, which showed signs of weakening inflation.

On the daily chart of ETHUSD, there was a bullish breakout (1) of the upper boundary of the rising channel that was active in 2023 – which suggests that the market is overbought, and a technical pullback with a breakout test of the $2k psychological level will be a likely scenario.

This forecast represents FXOpen Companies’ opinion only, it should not be construed as an offer, invitation, or recommendation with respect to FXOpen Companies’ products and services or as financial advice.

FXOpen offers the world's most popular cryptocurrency CFDs*, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. Floating spreads, 1:2 leverage — at your service. Open your trading account now or learn more about crypto CFD trading with FXOpen.

*Important: At FXOpen UK, Cryptocurrency trading via CFDs is only available to our Professional clients. They are not available for trading by Retail clients. To find out more information about how this may affect you, please get in touch with our team.

This article represents the opinion of the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand only. It is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, or recommendation with respect to products and services provided by the Companies operating under the FXOpen brand, nor is it to be considered financial advice.