Author: TechFlow
Original Title: Ethereum 1.9 Billion Unstaking Wave: Profit-Taking or a New Ecological Starting Point?
Whenever the market is good, FUD is inevitable.
Today, a piece of news has once again raised concerns about ETH's price:
Validators on the Ethereum network are queuing up to unstake ETH.
As a representative of the PoS consensus mechanism, staking ETH is technically used to maintain the entire Ethereum network's security, and economically provides additional income from staking, locking ETH's liquidity in staking pools.
According to data from Validator Queue, as of July 23rd, approximately 521,252 ETH are in the exit queue for unstaking, with a current market value of around $1.93 billion, and the waiting time for unstaking exceeds 9 days and 1 hour.
This is the longest queue validators have formed when choosing to exit over the past year.
Since each validator typically stakes 32 ETH, this theoretically represents over 16,000 validators seeking to exit staking. Such a large-scale queue for unstaking gives off a sense of potential danger.
Profit-Taking?
Are whales and institutions about to sell ETH for profit?
The surge in Ethereum unstaking may be partially related to recent price increases.
Starting from the low point in early April 2025 (around $1,500-2,000 range), ETH has experienced a strong rebound, with a cumulative increase of 160% to date. Specifically, on July 21st, ETH reached a peak of $3,812, the highest in seven months.
Such rapid increases often prompt some investors to take profits, especially early stakers who may decide to lock in gains after seeing returns, rather than continuing to hold.
From a historical perspective, this pattern is not new.
From January to February 2024, after the ETH/BTC ratio rose 25% in a week, a similar scale of unstaking occurred, leading to a short-term price drop of 10%-15%. Around the same period, Celsius's bankruptcy liquidation saw 460,000 ETH unstaked in a short time, causing network validator exit queue congestion for about a week.
Not Necessarily Selling Pressure
Unlike before, although this ETH unstaking queue is long and the unstaking amount is large, it doesn't necessarily mean direct selling pressure.
First, looking at Validator Queue data, on July 23rd, 520,000 ETH were in the unstaking queue, but simultaneously, 360,000 ETH entered the staking queue.
Offsetting these, the net ETH exit from the Ethereum network would be significantly reduced.
Secondly, institutional behavior provides a certain buffer.
Data from July 22nd shows that the total ETF inflow for various institutions' ETH spot ETFs reached $3.1 billion, significantly larger than the 520,000 ETH (about $1.9 billion) in the unstaking queue that day.
And this is just one day's ETF net inflow, not to mention the 9-day waiting period for validator exit queue.
Moreover, unstaking doesn't necessarily mean selling.
In the current ETH price surge context, concentrated unstaking could be due to institutions adjusting custody services or shifting to crypto treasury strategies - more explicitly, changing ETH custodians to seek more returns, rather than selling ETH.
On-chain, unstaked ETH is more likely to be used in DeFi and Non-Fungible Token related activities. For example, providing liquidity as collateral, or whales sweeping Crypto Punks' floor prices yesterday;
Additionally, on-chain LST tokens often experience de-pegging, providing arbitrage opportunities - recently, stETH to ETH ratio dropped to 0.996 (about 0.04% discount), with weETH showing similar fluctuations. Arbitrageurs buy discounted LST and wait for 1:1 re-pegging, increasing ETH demand.
Overall, unstaking appears more like an internal Ethereum ecosystem adjustment, rather than a direct selling signal.
However, social media offers various speculations. While concentrated unstaking doesn't necessarily mean selling pressure, it might indicate a "changing of the guard".
Some argue that BlackRock, committed to pushing crypto assets into mainstream finance, has become ETH's de facto major player. As of July data, BlackRock has accumulated over 2 million ETH (valued at $6.9-8.9 billion), representing 1.5%-2% of total ETH supply (approximately 120 million ETH).
This is not a secret but an open ETF asset management behavior, more like an institutional-level "clear operation" - publicly holding and accumulating ETH through ETFs to drive institutional adoption, rather than market manipulation.
The logic of changing guards is that as Ethereum transitions from insider value consensus to a broader financial tool consensus, Wall Street's takeover is an increasingly obvious trend.
This speculation is not unreasonable; staking and unstaking might be a transformation of chip structure.
Regardless, Ethereum's growth potential will continue to support its leadership in the crypto field, and this unstaking wave might just be the starting point of a new cycle.
