Blockchain analytics firm Santiment released data on Sunday showing that large Ethereum investors are actively dumping their holdings and have already sold more than $4.2 billion worth of coins in the past five weeks.

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

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

The data indicates that Ethereum whales have kept redistributing their market shares since the successful Merge update. This could have been the key reason for the intense selling pressure that brought the value of ETH to the level it currently reached.

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

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

Thanks to the Merge update, the Ethereum supply is now deflationary, but prices are still struggling, according to data from Ultrasound.Money. Since October 11 last week, the supply of ETH has been reduced by more than 4,000 tokens, but there is still no corresponding price increase. Despite reduced supply, the price of Ether has fallen by around 25% in the month since the Merger. At the time of writing, the price of Ether was trading at $1,284.41.

Last Friday, Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin explained that after the Merger, Ether’s price action was kind of a sell-off along with some Ethereum miners “unloading their Ethereum inventory while shutting down their rigs” after the Ethereum blockchain migrated to the proof of participation. The executive further pointed the finger at inflation and other macroeconomic events for the continued decline in the price of ETH along with Bitcoin and the rest of the cryptocurrency market.

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