Ether Ends April 3 Above $3,500 on Kraken, Outpacing Bitcoin

Kraken’s market record for April 3, 2022 placed ether at $3,523.10 after a 2.2% daily gain, compared with bitcoin at $46,423 after a 1.3% rise. On that venue and over its UTC reporting day, ether therefore outperformed bitcoin by 0.9 percentage points and finished above $3,500.

The move put Ethereum’s native asset near levels not seen since early January 2022. It also arrived during an active testing phase for Ethereum’s planned transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. That protocol backdrop was real, but the available evidence does not establish that expectations surrounding the transition caused the April 3 price gain.

A gain recorded on light venue volume

Kraken reported $596.4 million of spot trading across all of its crypto and fiat markets on April 3. Its stated 30-day average was $894.1 million. Coinburn calculates that the session’s reported volume was $297.7 million, or approximately 33.3%, below that average.

Ether generated $125.9 million of Kraken trading volume, while bitcoin accounted for $120.8 million. Tether led the venue at $129.7 million. Those figures show ether was central to activity on Kraken, but they do not measure worldwide turnover or capital entering the crypto market as a whole.

The subdued total matters when interpreting the advance. A Sunday price move occurring below a venue’s recent average volume can establish where that market traded, but it supplies weaker evidence of broad institutional participation than a comparable move confirmed across multiple exchanges and benchmark products. Crypto has no consolidated official closing auction, so prices and returns vary with venue, pair selection and the boundary used to define a day.

The protocol context was concrete but unfinished

Ethereum’s Kiln test network had completed its proof-of-stake transition on March 15, 2022. The Ethereum Foundation described Kiln as the expected final purpose-built merge testnet before existing public testnets were upgraded. Its March records also documented client errors and continuing testing work.

That distinction is important. On April 3, Ethereum mainnet still used proof-of-work, and the Foundation had not announced a mainnet transition date. Kiln demonstrated progress toward a technically significant change; it did not guarantee a schedule, eliminate implementation risk or convert market enthusiasm into a measurable fundamental valuation.

Contemporaneous market coverage had already noted ether trading around $3,500 and at its highest level since the beginning of January. Kraken’s April 3 record independently confirms that the asset held above that threshold at its venue’s daily mark. It does not, by itself, prove a durable breakout or a causal connection to protocol development.

What the April 3 record establishes

The narrow conclusion is verifiable: ether rose 2.2% to $3,523.10 on Kraken during the April 3 UTC reporting day, beating bitcoin’s 1.3% return while exchange-wide spot volume ran about one-third below its reported 30-day average.

The stronger interpretation—that traders broadly repriced ether because the proof-of-stake transition was approaching—remained plausible market commentary, not an established fact. Funding rates, derivatives positioning, cross-exchange order flow and attributable institutional transactions would be needed to support that claim.

Later context

Ethereum ultimately completed its mainnet transition to proof-of-stake on September 15, 2022. That later outcome confirms the direction of the development program, but it was not known with certainty on April 3 and should not be used to portray the April market move as inevitable.