After Ethereum plunged to $480, GAS fees rose and miner fees briefly increased

As the price of Bitcoin fell sharply on Thanksgiving to around $16,300, it became clear that this led to a larger sell-off in altcoin prices, with the second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum falling to $480.

Just the day before, ETH had reached as high as $620, its highest level since May 2018, as confirmation of the launch of ETH 2.0 on December 1st was confirmed.

“While Bitcoin has dominated market attention over the past few weeks, Ethereum has been quietly building its own momentum,” said Konstantin Richter, founder of Blockdaemon. He said that as ETH 2.0 gets closer, “market confidence is reaching its peak.”

After reaching the $600 mark, Ethereum faced strong selling pressure. According to IntoTheBlock ’s IOMAP indicator, “ETH’s strongest support level is at $531, with 4 million addresses holding ETH between these price levels.”

As a result, before Thanksgiving, Ethereum's funding rate was positive on several top centralized exchanges, meaning that long traders began paying short positions to keep the price of perpetual futures contracts around the index price.

Last night, the price of Ethereum fell by more than 20% to $480. At the time of writing, ETH/USD is trading around $500 with a ‘real’ volume of $3.4 billion.

GAS Fee Rising Network Becomes Too Expensive Due to Market Volatility

Not only ETH but DeFi tokens like most of the cryptocurrency market are also in the red. These cryptocurrencies are actually down between 15% and 30%.

As a result of these losses, people began to move their assets, and a large amount of activity on the Ethereum network caused the price of GAS to surge.

Since the crash, GAS has exploded. DeFi traders are actively adjusting their positions, noted trader and economist Alex Kruger.

Blockchair reports that ETH gas fees have surged to 180 GWEI, a 200% year-over-year increase from yesterday’s 60.7 GWEI.

Earlier this week, GAS fees dropped to 29 Gwei, down from the peak of 539 Gwei on September 17 when DeFi peaked. As a result, Ethereum's average miner fee rose to $7.48, an increase of 236% from yesterday's $2.28. On September 2, the average miner fee reached an all-time high of $15.2.