Why is Ethereum down 45% year-to-date if whales are buying?

Whale buying and price direction are not the same signal. SharpLink and large addresses have accumulated through the drawdown per AMBCrypto, but they have been absorbing supply from older holders and ETF redemptions, not driving net demand. The buying has cushioned the fall, not reversed it.

What does the $28M new-wallet accumulation actually mean?

NewsBTC flagged a freshly created address that stacked over $28 million in ETH this week with no prior on-chain history. That footprint usually indicates a fund or treasury deploying capital rather than retail or market-making activity. It is a signal worth tracking, not a thesis on its own.

Why is $1,490 the level everyone is watching?

It is the demand shelf that has absorbed every flush since the spring drawdown began, per CryptoSlate. A daily close below it removes the last technical floor before $1,320. A defense of it gives bulls a base to argue from.

How could the staking rewards proposal affect price?

The EthResear.ch proposal would divert a portion of validator rewards toward protocol-level public goods funding per ZyCrypto. If adopted, it would re-rate the validator yield curve, which would ripple into liquid staking token pricing and the leverage books built on top of stETH and similar assets.

Ethereum at $1,581: Old Wallets Sell, New Ones Buy, And The $1,490 Line Decides

On-chain flows

This is where the story splits in half. NewsBTC surfaced a wallet created this week that has already stacked more than $28 million in ETH, a clean accumulation footprint with no prior history and no obvious exchange linkage. Wintermute-style market-making this is not. It looks like a fund or treasury deploying into weakness.

On the other side, CryptoSlate documented four long-dormant wallets, some last active in the 2010-era stretch, selling 37,602 ETH near $1,560 over the past week. That is roughly $59 million of supply hitting the tape from holders whose cost basis is effectively zero. The $28M new-wallet buy does not absorb the $59M sell on its own. It needs help, and that help has to come from the SharpLink-style treasuries and the whale clusters AMBCrypto flagged.

The contrast paragraph writes itself. New money is buying ETH at levels that old money has decided are good enough to exit. The marginal price-setter in the next two weeks is whoever runs out of conviction first.

Ethereum printed $1,581 on Saturday with the 50, 100, and 200-day moving averages stacked overhead as resistance and the MACD histogram pinned at zero, a technical inflection that resolves bearishly roughly 60% of the time per Blockchain.News. The fight is no longer about narrative. It is about who blinks first at $1,490, the level CryptoSlate flagged as the demand line buyers cannot dodge. A freshly created wallet has already answered for one side, accumulating more than $28 million in ETH this week per on-chain data surfaced by NewsBTC, while four dormant wallets unloaded 37,602 ETH near $1,560 into that same demand zone.

By Elena Stojanović· AI-assisted· Regulation correspondent

Market context

Ethereum is down roughly 45% year-to-date and trading at $1,581 into the weekend, a level that looks less like a floor and more like a holding pen. The macro tape is not helping. Spot Bitcoin ETFs bled $1.8 billion last week, an anti-record per CryptoPotato, and the same redemption streak is dragging on Ethereum funds. That outflow picture is the part of this story too many readers skip. Sentiment scores can run hot while the actual dollar flow runs out the door, and right now both are happening at once.

The headline numbers in our CryptoBeast composite read bullish at 70, with the sentiment subcomponent maxed at 100. The market-trend subcomponent sits at 50. That gap is the whole story. Traders are talking constructive. Price is not confirming. SharpLink and a handful of large addresses kept buying through the drawdown per AMBCrypto, which is the kind of headline that reads bullish until you notice the buyers needed something to absorb. That something was old supply.

Technical setup

The chart is ugly in a specific, tradable way. Per Blockchain.News, ETH is printing $1,581 with the 50, 100, and 200-day moving averages all stacked above as resistance and the MACD histogram frozen at zero. That configuration resolves bearishly about 60% of the time, which is not a forecast so much as a base rate worth respecting.

The level that matters is $1,490. CryptoSlate framed it as the demand line buyers cannot dodge, and the framing is fair. It is the shelf that has absorbed every flush since the spring drawdown began. Above, the first real supply zone sits at $1,720, where the 50-day sits and where the latest rejection printed. Between those two levels is no-man's-land. A daily close below $1,490 opens the door to $1,320, the next horizontal where 2024 accumulation clusters. A reclaim of $1,720 on volume flips the moving average stack from resistance to support and forces the shorts to cover.

On-chain flows

Ethereum at $1,581: Old Wallets Sell, New Ones Buy, And The $1,490 Line Decides

Market context

Technical setup

On-chain flows

Sentiment

Scenarios

Risks

Disclaimer

Key takeaways

Frequently asked

Sources