Ethereum price analysis: ETH continues consolidation, swift drop to $1,600 next?

Ethereum price analysis is bearish today as we have seen further consolidation after a strong rally earlier this week. Therefore, ETH/USD should soon start to retrace and look to retest the $1,600 mark as support.

Timeline of Ethereum

NFTs across Ethereum [ETH] marketplaces seem to have sustained steadiness as July closes. However, the entire NFT market has not fully recovered despite the uptrend in the crypto market and ETH's uptick.

Benzinga has examined the prospects for many investors' favorite stocks over the past week, while offering a 24/7 news feed, live chat and charting software on Benzinga Pro.  Investors were digesting a lot of data this week with major companies reporting earnings, including Alphabet inc (NASDAQ: GOOG), General Motors Co. (NYSE: GM), Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN).

In its recently organized Academic Grants Round, the Ethereum foundation issued a $2 million grant that will be used to support research on Ethereum and the network's related technologies. Fund Allocated to 39 Research Projects Earlier this year, the Ethereum foundation announced that it would issue a $750K grant to fund several “formal, scientific and systematic” research projects aimed at improving the Ethereum network.

Ethereum price (ETH) has started resuming the upward momentum after breaking the initial resistance at $1,600. The largest cryptocurrency is expected to rise to the high of $2,050 if the bullish momentum continues.

Ethereum is scheduled to undergo its biggest network update ever in 2022. As a result, Ethereum (ETH) is completing the last steps of the much awaited update that will eliminate the practice of mining ether via proof-of-work (PoW).

Polygon (MATIC) is witnessing surging network and developer activity in the second quarter of 2022 despite the ongoing crypto bear market. Polygon is a scaling solution that aims to enable the widescale adoption of decentralized apps on the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. The Polygon chain is now home to 5.

As The Merge draws nearer, the Ethereum team has not relented in deploying preparatory upgrades and testnets. Barely two weeks after the Shadow Fork 9 went live, the Ethereum development team deployed the tenth shadow fork on the mainnet.

The Ethereum network recorded a spike in active addresses early in the week. The surge has baffled on-chain analysts, with opinions being split on whether it is a positive or a negative sign.

The Solana (SOL) Foundation has opened its first physical store in New York City called Solana Spaces NYC. The Ethereum (ETH) competitor claims it is “the world's first retail and educational space dedicated to Web3.” The Solana Foundation says the store is devoted to blockchain newcomers.

What happened: On Thursday a total of 2,023.98 Ether (CRYPTO: ETH) worth $3,416,744, based on the current value of Ethereum at time of publication ($1,688.13), was burned from Ethereum transactions. Burning is when a coin or token is sent to an unusable wallet to remove it from circulation.