Ether Trades Flat After Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade

CORRECTION (April 12, 2023, 21:10 UTC): This story previously said ETH was up since the upgrade happened and said trading was volatile; neither was actually the case.

Ethereum's long-awaited Shanghai upgrade has been deployed, and the blockchain's native cryptocurrency, ether (ETH), is basically unchanged after the monumental event went live.

Ether is trading around$1,914 – about where it was right before the upgrade happened – as validators unstaked tokens that had previously been locked up since Ethereum shifted to proof-of-stake last year. ETH is up 1.1% versus 24 hours earlier.

Analysts were divided on potential price action in the lead up to the upgrade, with many predicting that fresh supply would increase sell pressure while others thought it may become a psychological battle where traders punish the over-crowded short trade.

In an email to CoinDesk, Brent Xu, CEO of cross-chain decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Umee, wrote that he didn't expect a big decline for ETH or related liquid staking tokens (LST) in the near future.

"The momentum is just too powerful," Xu wrote. "Right now, there are many institutions holding ETH and LSTs. Retail basically isn't in the picture, and retail would be the ones who would dump at this moment. But the institutions won't really be impacted by this upgrade because their investing time horizons are longer term."

UPDATE (April 12, 2023, 23:44 UTC): Adds Xu quote.