Ethereum's run over the past three weeks can now be classified as nothing short of staggering. The #2 asset has now jumped 58% in this brief (even for crypto) timeframe.

Getting right to the point in our latest Pulse insight, here are a few bullish and bearish cases on whether history can continue being made in April.

Bullish Cases:

Address activity shows a clear and beautiful rise in the past year.

The average age of invested dollars in Ethereum clearly indicates new money has come in and dormant investments are moving.

"Meh" Cases:

Volume hasn't shown amazing ascension during this historic run.

Development activity rates, similarly, isn't really showing overwhelming growth signs. Github submissions are still significantly higher than Ethereum's 2015 debut, though.

Bearish Cases:

Average 30-day trader returns are becoming sky-high again, generally a toppish sign.

Ethereum's continually rising gas fees may eventually stifle the amount of utility and transactions users ideally want to make.

Very often, we will see the mainstream crowd play a major role in small to mid-sized price fluctuations. And by major role, we mean wherever the mass majority thinks Bitcoin or Ethereum is heading next, the opposite outcome comes to fruition more often than not.

Let's look at the BitMEX perpectual contract funding rates during the first week of April. This metric helps gauge where leveraged traders are placing their bets.

When bars are high, greed is taking place (a good time to sell). When low, shorts are paying long, indicating fear is kicking in (a good time to buy).

Here's Bitcoin:

The two largest bars of the week were right near local tops, and both led to major price downswings.

Ethereum:

The same outcome is true. ETH dropped both times this metric rose higher.

And with social mentions, we recently dropped to "fear" range when we dropped to $56k.

Not surprisingly, we're now back to $58.4k.

Let's take a quick look at what some of Santiment's top leading metrics have to say about Ethereum jumping back above $1,800:

Active Addresses vs. Deposits

Rising active addresses (orange) indicate an asset is increasing utility over time, while shrinking active deposits (pink) indicate an asset is having less tokens moving to exchanges with the intention of potential selloffs. Great sign here.

NVT

Our NVT model measures how healthy token circulation looks based on a fluctuating market cap. We're in yellow-green semi-bullish territory as of now.

Supply on Exchanges

Ethereum's supply on exchanges continues moving down, a great sign that more tokens are moving into hard wallets and DeFi.

MVRV

The best times to buy, according to our MVRV metric, is when average trader returns dip under 0%. Currently, we're in modest semi-bearish territory at +7.3%.

Weighted Sentiment

We're currently seeing the most negative Twitter sentiment of 2021. The crowd is in disbelief, and this is a bullish indication.

Visa news: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/99639/visa-now-settles-payments-in-usdc-stablecoin-ethereum

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance Coin, and Chainlink have all seen their share of expected growth of addresses interacting on their respective networks. But some have been much more active in contrast to others these past six months.

Below is a chart showing which projects are still showing solid activity through this extended bull run, while others are revealing signs of tapering off in regards to this impactful and predictive metric:

Quick thoughts:

Clearly, Ethereum (in blue) has been showing the most long-term growth among these four juggernaut assets, combined with the least amount of fading.

Bitcoin had its peak right at the beginning of 2021, It hasn't shown a serious decline, but the gradual dropoff back to around 1.10M addresses a day is a concern.

Both Chainlink and Binance Coin have had isolated spikes, with LINK particularly throwing up a caution flag, reverting back to about a 2-month low.

Here's a more zoomed in perspective, for reference:

Our popular 'Weighted Social Sentiment' charts are finally back! They're once again available here for our PRO members to explore how positive vs. negative commentary is looking in real-time for 1,000+ assets.

Weighted social sentiment combines the positive/negative commentary, and multiply by the amount of social volume. Generally prices top out when this gets too high, and bottoms when getting too low.

Bitcoin

BTC's at its most negative sentiment in 5 months, in spite of it pushing toward its recent all-time high.

Ethereum

Ethereum isn't quite at an extremely low negative level like Bitcoin, but it's seeing some similar negative commentary currently.

XRP

XRP has been just slightly negative for upwards of a month now.

Chainlink

Chainlink has quietly become more negative, and is sitting at its lowest level since October.

Polkadot

Polkadot very recently took a bit nosedive after what appears to be a double top.

Cardano

Cardano is finally neutral again after its most euphoric social sentiment in over a year.

Network Realized Profit or Loss (NPL) calculates the overall ROI across all daily transactions for a crypto asset. Generally, spikes are what we look to avoid, as it implies increased chances of local tops and short-term price normalization.

So are we seeing major spikes to be worried about? Here's how NPL currently looks for some of crypto's biggest names:

Bitcoin

Bitcoin hit its lowest NPL of the month yesterday, and is well below its 30d and 200d trendlines. A great sign that an imminent local top isn't approaching.

Ethereum

ETH is more neutral than BTC, sitting right between its 30d and 200d trendlines.

Chainlink

Chainlink is at a low for the month in NPL, and this coincides with a major address activity spike. Could be good here.

Litecoin

LTC's NPL is below the 30d and 200d trendlines and has been sitting encouragingly low for about 2 straight weeks now.

Anyone that's used (or tried to use) Ethereum in the past 30-60 days is painfully aware of the mounting fee problem tackling the network.

At the time of writing, the average fee to interact with the Ethereum blockchain stands at $12.2, though it regularly climbs to 3-4x that number on occasion.

What is less talked about, however, is that many recent fee spikes only really last about 30-60 minutes, and often seem to coincide with ETH's local price bottoms and short-term bouncebacks:

While the pattern is far from conclusive, it may suggest that at least some fee hikes may be prompted by panic sell-offs and 'paper hand' capitulation, which - assuming enough 'buy the dip' pressure - ends up marking an interim bottom for the second largest coin.

Though the ratio of a crypto asset's supply on exchanges may not seem to have an immediate impact on prices, the long-term correlations between coins moving away from exchanges while prices move up, is quite evident.

Let's take a look at three ERC-20 assets that are showing this pattern as a volatile week in crypto full of price retracements is coming to an end:

Ethereum

Crypto's #2 market cap asset has seen quite the pullback since its retrace from above $2k last week. However, ETH's supply isn't budging away from offline wallets.

Bancor

Bancor's supply moving away from exchanges had a lot to do with its ability to hit a 2-year high $6.17 last week. BNT supply is now 71.7% below its one-year average.

Kyber Network

KNC's supply has jumped to 39.2% after being as low as 36.1% on January 31st. On the long-term scale, the amount of tokens is still 17% lower than its one-year average.