As most HODLers continue to suffer losses, short traders appear to be accumulating.
According to the statistics provided by Santiment, whales and sharks have significantly increased the amount of Ethereum they possess during the previous 13 days. This comes at a time when the leading at was trading at its psychological support level of $1.2K. In the meantime, the price of ETH has experienced a drop of 4% over the course of the past week.

On the other hand, the on-chain analytics site discovered that Ethereum addresses holding between 100 and 100,000 $ETH had grown their balances by 3.4% over the course of the preceding thirteen days. Keep in mind that Binance CEO and co-founder Changpeng Zhao tweeted about the FTX exchange 13 days ago, which ultimately led to the collapse of the SBF's platform.

As the whole cryptocurrency market was collapsing, Ethereum whales and sharks reacted to the events by stockpiling the cryptocurrency. Last week, Santiment disclosed that this category of Ether holders owned their greatest quantity of ETH since July. During the time of this writing, that supply was 46.85%.

The Ever-Growing Stockpile of Ether

Despite the fact that the price of Ethereum has remained in the same range as it was in June, on-chain statistics suggest that HODLers have been continuously accumulating Ether since November 6. In addition, the data provided by CryptoQuant showed that the token's exchange reserve has been consistently falling.

During the time that this article was being written, the total number of ethers traded on exchanges had dropped by 10%, landing at 20.33 million. Since the fall of FTX, this suggested that there have been less drops in the price of Ethereum.

In addition, since then, a greater number of market participants have bought the cryptocurrency rather than sold it. This narrative was further emphasized by the soaring Ethereum pool that was taken out of exchanges during that timeframe. Since November 6, the number of altcoins available for purchase on cryptocurrency exchanges has, according to data provided by the cryptocurrency company Santiment, increased by 2%.

Despite this, investor sentiment toward Ethereum remained negative, fluctuating at -0.613 as this article was being written, due to the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that pervaded the entire cryptocurrency space in the aftermath of the FTX debacle. Additionally, the majority of holders of Ether have kept their assets since November 6th.

At the time that this article was written, the MVRV Ratio lingered around -19.41%. If holders have been making a loss since November 6th, then what caused the sudden surge in accumulation? An analysis of Ethereum's funding rate could reveal this information. Since November 6th, the funding rates for Ether have consistently remained negative. This indicated that short traders were the most active participants in the market, and they accumulated ETH in preparation for further price drops.