Whales accumulate ETH as Dec. 3 Fusaka upgrade nears

Large Ethereum holders have increased balances by 7.6 million ETH since April, a 52% rise for wallets with 10,000 to 100,000 ETH, according to on-chain data compiled by CryptoQuant.

Smaller wallets cut balances by 16% over the same period, while spot trading volumes picked up after Ethereum’s early-November pullback. ShayanMarkets, a CryptoQuant-verified analyst, described these spikes in spot activity as “the start of trend reversals or late-stage compression phases before major upswings.”

Shawn Young of MEXC Research noted that whale accumulation increases the chance of a local bottom, adding that “this cycle looks similar to previous bottoms, marked by large wallets absorbing sell-side liquidity from short-term holders.” 

He also pointed to the ETH/BTC ratio holding near multi-month lows, daily transactions up about 25% from September, and the staked ETH discount normalizing since October’s market stress.

Institutional activity has added to the accumulation trend. BitMine Immersion Technologies acquired 110,288 ETH-about $389 million at current prices-over the past week. The publicly listed company now holds more than 3.5 million ETH valued near $12.7 billion, along with 192 Bitcoin and $398 million in cash.

At the same time, an update “Fusaka” is approaching. Core developers set December 3 for the mainnet upgrade after it cleared a third and final testnet this week.

Fusaka lowers L2 costs and boosts throughput by activating PeerDAS (EIP-7594) and scaling blob capacity (BPO); dedicated blob lanes for rollups were added earlier in Dencun (EIP-4844).

Cheaper Layer 2 transactions could reduce fees paid on the main chain, which may slow ETH burn and affect fee revenue, according to analysts. Market participants are watching the $3,000 to $3,400 range as a support area while accumulation persists.

As we wrote previously, Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko flagged a drop in Ethereum node synchronization, with more than 20% of beacon nodes unsynced-8,919 synced out of 11,381-while the network had about 1.2 million validators earlier in 2025.