If this situation expands, there would be a supply crisis for ETH.
The consequence would be a great “explosion” for the price of ETH, for shortage of supply.
Wintermute, a cryptocurrency trading firm, is running out of Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native currency, in its OTC operations (“over the Counter” or outside the counter, in Spanish).
The OTC markets of digital assets allow institutional investors or companies to negotiate large volumes discreetly, without going through a public exchange so as not to affect their prices.
The news was released by the Wintermute CEO, Evgeny Gaevoy, who said: “There is almost no ETH available for sale at the Wintermute OTC table.”
According to Explorer data Arkham, at the moment The Exchange has 3,100 units of the Ethereum coin. It is an important reduction if it is taken into account that July 10 had 27,000 ETH. The lowest point was recorded on July 2, when his balance fell to only 807 eth.
If this dynamic persists and expands to other OTC platforms, it is likely that the big buyers have to go to public exchanges to get ethwhich can push the rising price.
This supply shortage in the OTC market reinforces the narrative that there is an institutional fever for the Ethereum currency in the market. A sample of this is that there are currently more than 1.3 million ETH in the hands of companies, foundations, DAO protocols and governmental entities, as reported by cryptootics.
Within that framework, it is worth noting that more and more companies are analyzing the possibility of incorporating ETH into their corporate treasury to generate additional income through staffing.
This strategy is successful for some firms such as Sharplink (SBET), a company specialized in sports bets that quote on Nasdaq. Through the staking, he already obtained 322 ETH, the equivalent of 1.1 million dollars at current prices.
