It no longer comes as a surprise when we hear news of Ethereum growing and hitting new records because the blockchain has been steadily impressing us with its performance every year since its initial launch. If you’ve kept track of Ethereum’s progress, its adoption progress has been steadily increasing.
However, 2021 saw this uptrend increase significantly, as there has been a notable increase in users who gained an interest in investing in Ethereum. The crypto asset currently touts one of the highest numbers of investors worldwide, and now it seems that Ethereum has no plans to stop there.
It appears that the cryptocurrency has set yet another new record, as the crypto wallets holding ETH have already reached over 71 million.
Ethereum Sets New Record
According to a recent report by Glassnode, the number of wallets holding ETH coins has reached a brand-new record. The firm also mentioned that these wallets kept growing as 2021 progressed, with a surge of more than 30% from last year’s high. There are now 71,364,788 wallets with a non-zero balance.
Last year, Ethereum also hit a similar record where non-zero ETH addresses reached more than 51 million. This was a significant event for Ethereum, as it meant that the network was experiencing heavy adoption from the market. What made it even more significant was that it happened during the early days of the bull run.
Over only a year, the network saw more than 20 million new addresses with a non-zero balance. However, it’s worth mentioning that Glassnode’s report doesn’t mention what the minimum address balance is. As such, we assume that while these wallets were undoubtedly non-zero, they most likely didn’t hold a significant amount by any measure.
For instance, a wallet could only hold about 0.000001 ETH, which would still be included in the list. Of course, this is only our assumption.
What Caused This?
It’s clear that the various rallies that caused Ethereum to hit several new all-time highs were one of the main reasons ETH adoption has increased. However, other factors aside from that have driven investors to invest in the Bitcoin alternative.
For one thing, decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs have been all the rage lately, and we believe they play a significant role in this.
With DeFi, users can benefit from financial opportunities that they probably wouldn’t be able to take advantage of anywhere else. One excellent example would be borrowing. Rather than undergoing the tedious process of applying for a bank loan, crypto investors can skip the lines and quickly get funds in only a few minutes through a DeFi lending protocol.
Other than that, NFTs have also offered crypto users a different level of financial freedom. However, it’s primarily content creators who benefit the most from this particular market.
Instead of having to go through a broker in the hopes of selling their art, creative can now easily mint and sell their creative projects online for a considerable sum. Not only that, but they receive all the proceeds directly.
