The number of Ethereum addresses with one or more ETH have risen to a record high
According to crypto data analytics site Glassnode, more addresses hold at least one ETH today more than ever. The metric site noted that there are as many as 1,170,598 addresses with one or more ETH currently trading at $483.82 — up 1.858% over the last 24 hours.
DeFi contribution
Ethereum made its biggest strides around June during its bull run, which was attributed to the rise of decentralised finance. The DeFi sector has taken off in the past few months, with its total value locked currently at $13.8 billion, and 7.7 million ETH having been injected into it, according to DeFi Pulse.
Glassnode pointed out that 1.076 million ETH addresses were holding at least one ETH back in July. This tally rose to 1.126 million as of September, translating to a 4.6% increase. Since then, more addresses have joined, taking the figure to 1.17 million as of the moment. Although this rise has been tremendous, it doesn’t come close to the scenario witnessed in 2017 when ETH approached its all-time high price.
2017’s remarkable upsurge
There were less than 66,000 holding at least one ETH at the beginning of that year. At the end of 2017, this figure had gone up beyond 700,000. By the time ETH was hitting its record price in January 2018, there were 872,783 addresses, a leap of over 1,200%.
While the current increase in the number of addresses with more than one ETH is less than 10%, it could be an indicator of how well the general crypto industry is doing. That said, it is important to keep in mind that not all of these addresses are owned by individuals.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, had the highest number (825,254) of wallets holding one or more BTC on 4 November. This number is considerably smaller than that of ETH, but that is expected considering Bitcoin has a higher price than Ethereum.