$1B Worth Of Ethereum Burned In 30 Days; 95% Net Reduction Makes It 'Hardest Money In The World'

In the last 30 days, $1 billion worth of Ethereum ETH/USD has been “burned” or removed from circulation forever.

What Happened: According to data from WatchTheBurn, over the last month 387,575 ETH have been burned.

Analysts at Delphi Digital attributed the significant amount of ETH burned in January to large NFT transactions on OpenSea.

Why It Matters: While the amount of ETH burned has been on the rise, its net issuance has dropped to just 19,719 ETH or $50 million in the last month.

This corresponds to a 95.16% net reduction of ETH from circulation.

“ETH is ultrasound money when fee burn exceeds issuance,” commented Ethereum researcher Justin Drake earlier this year.

Now, Ethereum’s rate of inflation has fallen lower than that of Bitcoin BTC/USD and industry watchers expect ETH’s inflation to turn negative in the next 6 months.

The blockchain’s upcoming transition to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) is also expected to play a part in its evolving supply dynamics. Currently, Ethereum miners are forced to sell ETH to sustain the capital-intensive operation that is Proof-of-Work (PoW) ETH mining.

The transition to PoS would effectively mean the end of ETH mining operations entirely, with miners being replaced by validators.

“Note that the pace of ETH issuance is important, as miners have tended to be forced sellers in the past to pay for the operating costs on their equipment,” stated analysts from Coinbase Global Inc COIN in a report.

“Thus, replacing them with (fewer) validators could reduce ETH issuance by up to 90% and the amount of ETH sold on exchanges by at least 30-50% by our estimate, as less computing power is required compared to PoW.”

Price Action: As of Monday morning, ETH was trading at $2,550, down 2.63% in the last 24 hours.