The Ethereum blockchain’s Shanghai upgrade (or “Shapella”) is almost here. The backward-incompatible hard fork will allow users to access some $30 billion worth of ether locked in the network since the tail end of 2020.

Some observers expect an ether price swoon after the upgrade as users liquidate their holdings while others believe the expected uptick in the selling pressure is already baked in and the market will bounce after the event in a classic “buy the news” move.

Henry Elder, head of decentralized finance at Wave Digital Assets, sees the upgrade as a clear “sell the news” event for ether and for governance tokens of liquid staking solutions like Lido, which have been rallying since early January in anticipation of the hard fork.

“We should expect the withdrawal queue to fill up immediately, and stay full for several weeks,” Elder said. “This will look like fulfillment of the ‘supply deluge’ narrative and markets will likely sell off.”

Elder added: “Most withdrawals will probably come from early individual stakers who now want to rotate into liquid staking solutions, and early users of now dominant staking solutions who want to rotate into minority staking solutions to increase decentralization.”

While the entire stack of over 18 million coins cannot be withdrawn immediately, partial withdrawals of just over one million coins earned as rewards for staking, can be processed immediately. That one million ETH represents a potential post-upgrade selling pressure.

According to Laurent Kssis, a crypto trading adviser at CEC Capital, ether has rallied ahead of the event and could come under pressure upon successful implementation of the upgrade.

“Traders have bought the news in advance of the Shanghai event, and if the event is successful they will dump their ETH on the market,” said Kssis. He predicts traders selling their ether following the upgrade in the view that they’ve made money for their locked up time and this will result in a strong supply of ether flooding the market.