Ethereum price analysis reveals in the last 24 hours ETH has been bullish, with prices tapping an intra-day high of $1,718.95.Bears came in and pushed prices lower, towards the Fibonacci retracement level of 61.8% at $1,642. ETH managed to hold above this level and is currently trading near the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level of $1,656.

Fundamental Analysis

Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko on Friday said developer Marius VanDerWijden found a vulnerability with the public test network Shapella. The issue appeared during the full synchronization of empty blocks, which has no transactions or withdrawals.

Other clients also reported the same issue. VanDerWijden said the team found that Go Ethereum (Geth) client nodes facing difficulty syncing with the Zhejiang testnet.

However, developers believe the problem can be fixed with a patch as it's fairly easy to test. In addition, core developer Tim Beiko asserts an additional Hive test is proposed for ensuring the issue is resolved correctly.

Interestingly, Ethereum core developers think the issue likely will not impact the Sepolia upgrade scheduled on February 28 at 4 AM UTC. The client releases for the upgrade and blog on the same will be announced early next week.

Ethereum's Shanghai upgrade will happen in March which will enable withdrawals of Ethereum staked as well as rewards on the Beacon chain. It is triggered by three testnets Zhejiang, Sepolia, and Goerli.

Shapella refers to two Ethereum upgrades, "Shanghai" and "Capella", allowing withdrawals on the execution layer and enhancing the Beacon Chain consensus layer. Other changes also reduce gas fees on the network.

Meanwhile, Ethereum's supply on centralized exchanges collapsed by 30% after the transition of the Ethereum network to a new algorithm.

If in September 2022 the supply of ETH on exchanges amounted to a little more than 19.1 million ETH, then in February 2023 the figure decreased by 30% to 13.3 million ETH. In dollar terms, the fall was 37%, analysts added.

What exactly caused the outflow of cryptocurrency from the trading floors is unclear. However, in general, the decline began precisely after the transition to PoS, according to Santiment. At least since then, the supply, albeit slowly, but gradually began to decline.

Technical Analysis

On 4H price chart, which shows the most pronounced prerequisites for a price plunge.

As we can see, the technical indicators reveal the ETH bulls have sought support near the EMA50 and are trying to push prices higher. The MACD histogram is in the negative zone, indicating bearish pressure is present. The RSI line has also dropped below the 50 level, which shows that bears have taken control of ETH prices. However,  bulls managed to defend the key support level of $1,600, which is a positive sign for Ethereum price analysis. If it is broken today, a further decline to $1,500 is possible.