Ethereum hits $4,885 for new all-time high price

Ethereum has dropped 4% in the last 24 hours to trade as low as $1,967 on Thursday morning, a mark not seen since March.

Selling pressure is weighing on the token as “traders are actively opening short positions,” CryptoQuant Head of Research Julio Moreno told Sherwood News. “US spot demand for ETH has weakened, as seen by an extremely negative Coinbase price premium approaching levels not seen since February.”

The price action has spurred $237.2 million in liquidations, with the majority of them, $225.1 million, coming from long positions, data from CoinGlass shows. Elsewhere, ethereum ETFs have notched their longest outflow streak this year at 12 days, with Wednesday recording almost $67.2 million in outflows, per SoSoValue.

“ETH’s break below the psychologically important $2,000 level reflects a deterioration in near-term crypto risk sentiment rather than a collapse in Ethereum fundamentals,” according to Coinbridge cofounder and CIO Kelly Ye.

Ye said the drop under $2,000 was amplified by rising volatility and geopolitical tensions amid renewed US-Iran escalation and broader de-risking across high-beta assets.

Sentiment surrounding the cryptocurrency has also softened after David Hoffman, a known ethereum advocate, publicly disclosed offloading his entire ETH position and questioned whether the network’s growth translates to meaningful value accrual to ethereum as an asset, Ye pointed out.

“Still, ETH has continued to hold a broader pattern of higher lows since the April 2025 tariff-driven selloff near $1,500, with the February 2026 low around $1,800 now emerging as the next key level to watch,” Ye told Sherwood News.

“Importantly, on-chain activity has not shown significant deterioration, and Ethereum TVL [total value locked] measured in ETH terms has started trending higher again since May, suggesting underlying network usage remains relatively resilient despite weaker price action,” Ye added.

Some ethereum treasury firms have not stopped their strategy, such as Bit Digital, which announced on Thursday purchasing 8,568 ethereum tokens for $20 million, bringing its total holdings to 158,461.75 tokens.

Meanwhile, other altcoins are also in the red, with solana and dogecoin dropping over 3% in the last 24 hours.

Ethereum has been stuck between $2,000 and $2,150 in the past week amid ongoing scrutiny toward the Ethereum Foundation, which has seen its talent pool thin out.

“ETH continues to show weakness... ETH/BTC keeps grinding lower, at a 10-month low,” Jasper De Maere, a desk strategist and OTC trader at Wintermute, posted on X. “The marginal risk dollar went into equities, not crypto. When AI semis are working and yields are easing, crypto should follow. It didn’t.”

De Maere continued, “Based on our OTC flow, we see that institutional buying pressure, which was responsible for the recent +ve price action, is now fading quickly, indicating that institutional investors might be at capacity or are re-assessing risk/reward at these new levels.”

Data from SoSoValue shows ethereum ETFs have seen 10 consecutive days of outflows, totaling more than $471.1 million.

Meanwhile, the blockchain’s cofounder Vitalik Buterin, who sits on the board of the Ethereum Foundation, addressed the controversy surrounding the nonprofit over the weekend. Holding around 0.16% of ethereum’s total supply, the foundation is not the center of blockchain network, but rather “one node, with a defined purpose alongside other nodes,” according to Buterin, who says nearly 90% of his net worth is in ethereum.

“EF is still in a transition period, and we expect its new long-term form to stabilize over the next few months,” Buterin said, adding that the EF will sell ethereum less and focus on remaining censorship-resistant, open-source, private, and secure.

“The most high-value ‘product’ of the ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is ETH the asset. Ethereum secures $250 billion of ETH,” Buterin continued. “That said, there are aspects of supporting ETH the asset — *necessary* aspects even — that are outside the scope of the EF. This is where we need other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does) to step in and help.”

Carlos Guzman, vice president of research at crypto trading firm GSR, said Vitalik’s response is a bet on credible neutrality as ethereum’s durable competitive advantage, which attracts liquidity, users, and apps, because “builders and institutions gravitate toward platforms they can trust won’t be captured or co-opted. This is what builds network effects, and network effects are what create durable moats,” Guzman wrote on X.

And yet, Guzman argued credible neutrality is just one piece of the puzzle:

“The risk is that a nimbler chain builds sufficient network effects by executing well on fees, throughput, and UX today while promising credible neutrality tomorrow. Vitalik’s vision is arguably the right one. Whether the ecosystem can execute on it before that window closes remains uncertain.”