Market context
Ether traded at $2,120 on Tuesday, sitting below its 100-hour moving average and rejecting a bearish trend line that capped the bounce near the same level, per NewsBTC's hourly read of the Kraken feed. The weekly tape is uglier. Wintermute's May 18 note pegged ETH down 10.
2% on the week against bitcoin's 5. 7%, and the trading firm flagged ether's continued underperformance across both spot and derivatives. ETH/BTC was pressing 0.
0275, funding had softened, and relative implied volatility stayed elevated. The macro backdrop did the damage. April CPI printed 3.
8% year over year, above the 3. 7% consensus, while the 10-year Treasury yield jumped 28 basis points to 4. 58%, its highest since September 2025.
Fed funds futures erased every cut priced for 2026 and started leaning into a 44% probability of a December hike, up from 22. 5% a week earlier. Long-duration assets took it on the chin.
Twenty-year-plus Treasuries fell 2. 8%, gold dropped 3. 8%, and Wintermute concluded that 'the only things that worked were the things causing the problem.
' Ether, the highest-beta major in the top three, predictably caught more of the unwind than bitcoin.
Technical setup
The hourly chart tells a coiled story. ETH bottomed at $2,075 after a slide from the $2,197 swing high, then clawed back through the 38. 2% Fibonacci retracement before stalling at the 61.