Sam Reynolds

<div id="highlights-block_61a7489ad5ab8" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Ether stalled during the US trading day, but took off during the Asian trading hours as investors double-down on DEXs, which gained 8% in the last 24 hours</li>
 <li>Open interest contracts for ether continue to inch up on Huobi and OKEX during the Asia trading day</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



While bitcoin and ether retreated during the US trading day after remarks from US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about inflation and continued regulatory uncertainty, price movement for ether picked back up during the Asian trading day pushing it past the $4,700 mark and in striking distance of its previous all-time high of $4,800. 



On OKEX and Huobi, two exchanges primarily serving traders in China and East Asia, open interest for ether continued to tick up, heading towards $1.4 billion on OKEX and $245 million on Huobi.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="422" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png" alt="" class="wp-image-11980" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=80 80w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-eth_futures-1024x422.png?w=1200 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption>Ether futures open interest on major Asian exchanges </figcaption></figure>



March Zheng, a partner at China-based Bizantine Capital, believes that ether will leave the market behind because traders in China are interested in getting more exposure to DeFi and decentralized exchanges given the <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/no-china-didnt-ban-crypto-its-just-pushing-exchanges-offshore/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">regulatory challenges</a> these exchanges are having in China.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“One potential factor for this uprise during Asian market hours is Ethereum’s bridge to DeFi. As China begins to close down access to Huobi for China-based traders by the end of December, retail traders may be looking to increase their ether positions to better position themselves in decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap or Sushiswap,” Zheng told Blockworks.&nbsp;</blockquote>



Zheng also noted that he’s seeing increased interest in Solana for similar reasons, as well as Arbitrum — an Ethereum layer-2 using optimistic roll-up technology to dramatically decrease gas fees for transactions. Arbitrum has attracted $2.74 billion in capital since launching over the summer, according to <a href="https://l2beat.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">L2beat.com</a>.



Sushiswap’s SUSHI token virtually mirrored the rise of ether during the Asia trading day, climbing 7% on-day while Uniswap&#8217;s UNI increased by 8% according to CoinGecko.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Meanwhile, the amount of ether being stored on exchanges, according to Cryptoquant, continues to decline. The data provider says that as of Nov. 23 there were approximately 17.6 million ether stored on exchanges. A month prior, there were approximately 18.2 million.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/2021-12-1-ETH-exchange-reserves-1024x409-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-11981"/><figcaption>The amount of ETH held in all exchange wallets</figcaption></figure>



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