Blockchain analytics company Santiment released data on Sunday showing that large Ethereum investors are actively dropping their holdings and have already sold over $4.2 billion worth of the coins in the last five weeks.

According to the data, Ethereum (ETH) shark and whale address holdings have reduced by more than 3 million ETHs in the last five weeks. In other words, the count of Ether addresses holding 100 to 1 million ETHs has dumped $4.2 billion worth of Ethereum during the same period of time.  

Dumping has played a role in influencing a significant drop in the value of ETH by around 25% since the middle of September.

The data indicates that Ethereum whales have maintained redistribution of their holdings on the market since the successful Merge update. This might have been the key reason for the intense selling pressure that drove the value of ETH to the level it reached currently.

However, since whales and sharks now own fewer coins than they did before, they will most likely push the price of the asset higher in the coming days. Normally, large investors tend to buy back the assets they have sold in the past.

The flow of crypto onto exchanges typically reflects bearish sentiment and is often done by traders to take a profit by selling their tokens, indicating that whales expect the prices to drop further in the near future.

Thanks to the Merge upgrade, the supply of Ethereum is now deflationary, but prices are still struggling, according to data from Ultrasound.Money. Since on October 11 last week, ETH's supply has dropped by over 4,000 tokens, but there is still no corresponding price boost. Despite a lowered supply, Ether's price has dropped around 25% in the month since the Merge. At the time of writing, Ether's price was trading at $1,284.41.

Last Friday, Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin explained that after the Merge, Ether price action was a kind of sell activity along with some Ethereum miners "unloading their ether inventory as they shut down their rigs" after Ethereum blockchain migrated to proof of stake mechanism. The executive further pointed fingers at inflation and other macroeconomic events for the continued drop of ETH price along with Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market.