A prominent market intelligence firm says that Ethereum’s (ETH) gas fees have dropped to levels not seen since the crypto markets collapsed in May of 2021.
In a new report, Santiment says that the depressed gas fees on Ethereum suggests that interest in using the leading smart contract platform have significantly declined.
“Ethereum fees are so low [in the] last days. We could even notice they’ve been that low before previous bottoms. Low fees mean very little activity, no one is interested to do anything.”
The crypto analytics firm is also looking at Dai (DAI), stablecoin built on the Ethereum blockchain. According to Santiment, DAI’s money velocity supports the notion that market participants currently have very little interest in using the second-largest crypto asset by market cap.
“It looks like velocity (a measure of how quickly money is circulating in the crypto economy) has always [increased] when we went to the top. Quite low now. What these two charts [are] showing together is hibernation. It happens typically in winter. Bears sleeping in winter. Waiting for a trigger…”
The crypto insights firm says that Dai’s money velocity and Ethereum’s extremely low gas fees are hinting at “stagnancy” and “fear” among market participants.
Ethereum is changing hands at $1,796 at time of writing, a 13% drop from its seven-day peak of $2,070.
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