Amount of ETH held by miners reaches highest level since 2016

Ethereum miners are reluctant to sell their assets and appear to expect further price increases.

The amount of Ethereum that is being held by miners has reached record levels in U.S. dollar terms as they remain reluctant to sell.

The balance held by Ethereum miners is the largest it has been since shortly after the network was launched five years ago. When converted into USD, it is at a historic peak of $1.85 billion, according to data provided by analytics platform Santiment.

The firm stated that the 532,750 ETH is the largest balance held by miners since July 13, 2016. The amount equates to around 0.45% of the total circulating supply of Ethereum which is currently 117.8 million ETH.

Miners usually sell the asset regularly to cover expenses which include electricity and hardware costs. A reluctance to sell suggests that miners could be holding out for further price increases.

Hash rate not hit

The Ethereum hash rate, which is often viewed as a reflection of network health and security, slumped during the miner exodus from China along with Bitcoin’s. Ethereum’s hash rate fell to 477 TH/s in late June but has fully recovered over the past three months and surged to new peaks. It is currently up 150% since the beginning of the year.

That’s despite China-based Ethereum mining pools dropping out of the race, with SparkPool and BeePool suspending operations in recent weeks. Curiously, there has been no noticeable drop in hash rate which hit an all-time high of 745 terrahashes per second (TH/s) on Oct. 5 according to Bitinfocharts.

Related: Miners have accumulated $600M worth of Bitcoin since Feb

Cointelegraph reported in September that Ethereum miners had started hoarding the asset following the London hard fork in early August. Research from the Kraken crypto exchange suggested that miners were expecting further price increases from potential deflationary properties following the launch of EIP-1559 which burns some of the transaction fees.

Since the upgrade went live on Aug. 5, 473,120 ETH worth around $1.7 billion has already been burnt according to Ultrasound.Money.

Further adding to the supply squeeze, a large percentage has also been staked on the Eth2 Beacon Chain contract. Around 6.7% or 7.9 million ETH has been locked for staking according to the Eth2 explorer. At current prices of around $3,577, this equates to roughly $28 billion worth.