Ethereum Near $1,750 as 54M ETH Sit in Loss, Spot ETFs Bleed $29M

Ethereum News

Ethereum opened the new trading day sharply lower, sliding to roughly $1,682 and shedding close to 5% intraday. The drop broke the rising trendline traders have tracked for months and pushed price below the 200-hour simple moving average. Analysts watching the technicals flag $1,580 as the next likely stop, with firmer support sitting near $1,500. Options open interest has thinned from $8.5 billion to $5.5 billion, and with perpetual funding rates hovering around zero, neither bulls nor bears hold a decisive edge — a classic bear market standoff.

Exchange flows reinforce that caution. On-chain data shows a net of roughly 57,700 ETH moving onto Binance in recent days, and assets shifting to the most liquid venue are often read as a prelude to selling. In derivatives, total open interest has retreated from $15 billion a month ago to $10.3 billion — a drop of about 31% and the lowest reading since April 2025. The estimated leverage ratio across exchanges has also fallen from its June 2 peak of 1.10 to 0.83. With only around 320 new addresses depositing ETH, fresh capital entering the market remains thin.

Governance produced its own headline. Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang announced her departure effective immediately, stressing that Ethereum is bigger than any single role or position. Her exit brings the number of people who have left or been let go from the foundation this year to roughly 19. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin said Wang had taken on one of the hardest jobs, reiterating that the foundation is not the center of Ethereum but simply one node among many with a specific purpose. A framework unveiled in March is designed to keep the network running even if the foundation and core developers were to disappear.

Despite the price pressure, network usage is sitting near an all-time high. On-chain data shows Ethereum reached 13.2 million monthly active users and 200.4 million transactions in the first quarter of 2026. User counts rose 85.9% year over year and transaction volume climbed 81.5%, lifting throughput to 25.78 transactions per second. Layer-1 fees, by contrast, fell 81.9% over the same span to $39.9 million, widening the gap between usage and revenue. Total value locked on the largest smart-contract blockchain climbed to $316.2 billion, while active loans rose to $21.8 billion.

This week also marked the 10th anniversary of one of the most pivotal breaks in Ethereum history. On June 17, 2016, an attacker exploited a reentrancy flaw in The DAO smart contract to drain roughly 3.6 million ETH — nearly a third of the fund. Worth about $50 million at the time, the attack pushed the community toward a hard fork; the split executed on July 20, 2016, at block 1,920,000, splitting the chain into today’s Ethereum and the altcoin Ethereum Classic. More than 75,000 unclaimed ETH left over from the episode has since become a fund worth roughly $130 million that now backs Ethereum’s security.

Large wallet moves are also in focus. On-chain data shows BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes bought about 1,500 ETH, a purchase worth roughly $2.63 million. The move came as Ethereum retested a long-term rising support line near $1,737 — the same band that marked bottoms in prior cycles. Some analysts argue that if that zone holds and price breaks higher, the $5,000 to $6,000 range could re-enter the conversation this cycle. Still, a 30% decline over the past 42 days is a reminder of how fragile that scenario is and how live the downside risks remain.

According to COINOTAG’s 42-indicator composite support/resistance scoring engine (as of 10:09 UTC), ETH is trading at $1,693, down 2.83% over the past 24 hours. The engine flags $1,711 as the strongest threshold at 82/100, where the Fibonacci 0.214 level, the prior day’s close and the R1 pivot converge; $1,872 follows at 62/100. To the downside, $1,678 (an LVN and MACD crossover, 62/100) is the first buffer, while $1,505 — the lower Donchian band and swing-low support — is the real floor at 69/100. An RSI of 37.26 and the downtrend confirm the pressure, though the MACD signal leans bullish. On the derivatives side, funding at 0.0017%, open interest of $6.25 billion and a long/short ratio of 2.57 (72% long) point to an overcrowded long stance; the Fear and Greed Index sits at 14, in ‘Extreme Fear.’ Losing $1,505 would invalidate the bullish thesis.