$1.2B in Ether withdrawn from centralized exchanges in record daily outflow

More than $1 billion worth of Ether has been removed from centralized exchanges in 24 hours, leading to speculation about imminent price gains for Ethereum as supply shrinks on many trading venues.

According to data shared by crypto analytics provider IntoTheBlock, $1.2 billion worth ETH was withdrawn from centralized exchanges on Sept. 16 to mark a new record in short-term outflows from exchanges.

IntoTheBlock noted that Ether’s price rallied by 60% in the 30 days after $1 billion was pulled from centralized trading platforms in April.

The situation has changed since April however. Last month’s London upgrade introduced a burn mechanism into Ethereum’s fee market, creating increased deflationary pressure on Ether’s supply dynamics.

At the time of writing, 309,505 Ether worth more than $1.1 billion has been burned in the 42 days since EIP-1559 went live, according to Ultrasound Money. As such, Ether has been removed from supply at a rate of roughly 5.05 ETH ($18,061) every minute or $26 million daily since the upgrade.

Booming NFT marketplace OpenSea is Ethereum’s leading DApp by burn rate representing more than 14% of all ETH that has been removed from supply, followed by Uniswap V2 with 5.5%, Tether with 4.9%, and Axie Infinity with 3%. Ether transfers have also driven 8.7% of burned Ethereum.

Bitcoin has also seen steady outflows from centralized trading venues since peaking at 17% of supply in May.

According to on-chain analytics firm Glassnode, centralized exchanges’ BTC reserves have fallen to their lowest level since February 2018.