The Ether (ETH) price has had a difficult time sustaining support in recent weeks. On April 13, the value of Ether began surging up to a peak of $2,100 on April 21, however, it has since fallen 13.5% and has rested at $1,850 support since then. This has caused investors to question the presence of buyers in the market, and whether the Ethereum asset will remain at this level for much longer.

The regulatory environment for cryptocurrency trading has grown stricter, particularly in the case of centralized exchanges. One example is Bybit, located in Dubai, which has now implemented KYC identity verification for order execution and withdrawals. Before their update on May 8, Bybit allowed non-KYC users to withdraw up to 100,000 USD Tether (USDT) per month.

Gemini, a US-based crypto exchange has launched a derivatives platform, though access is restricted to selected regions, excluding the U.S., Canada and most European countries except Switzerland. The move is likely due to the uncertain regulatory environment.

As well as this, the use of the Ethereum network in decentralized applications (Dapps) has seen a 30% decline compared to the 22 million ETH in total value locked (TVL) six months ago(DefiLlama Data), though the recent launch of native Ethereum staking may soon reverse this. The Ethereum network dominance on stablecoin deposits has also decreased and is now at its lowest level in over 12 months, down from 64% in December 2022. Contrarily, the networks of Binance Smart Chain in BNB terms and Polygon network’s MATIC deposits have decreased by 20% and 11%, respectively.

The success of Ethereum’s scaling solution is yet to be seen, but may not necessarily reflect positive sentiment surrounding the Ether price. The Ethereum market share by volume on decentralized exchanges (DEX) has dropped from 75% to 44% over the last few weeks, whilst trades on Arbitrum and BNB Smart Chain have risen to 22.2% and 16.6%, respectively.

The Ether options market can offer good insight into the sentiment of traders, with a 0.70 put-to-call ratio indicating that put option open interest lags the bullish call options, whereas a 1.40 ratio favours put options and can be seen as bearish. At present, protective put options outnumber the neutral-to-bullish call options by more than four times, indicating that professional traders are pricing higher odds of an ETH price decline, despite the continued presence of $1,850 support.



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