Only 14% of the circulating ETH moved in the last 30 days—that’s the tightest coin-age churn I’ve logged since the May 2021 mini-cycle.
Here's What Actually Happened
Sunday night (July 7th) felt eerily calm. ETH was camped out around $3,070, absorbing sell pressure like a veteran goalkeeper. A well-followed TradingView analyst—@CryptoKaleo, if you haunt the same corner of X that I do—flagged a textbook higher-low on the daily chart. The takeaway was simple: as long as the candles keep printing above that $2,900–$2,950 support band, the bulls keep their marching orders.
I’ve been staring at Ethereum charts since Homestead, and the setup is familiar. Back in 2017, after the ICO hangover, price compressed into a similar ascending wedge. Nobody wanted to believe it until ETH ripped 3x. Does history rhyme? It sure likes to hum the same tune.
Now Here's the Interesting Part
Open interest on the major derivatives venues—Binance, Bybit, CME—popped 8% in 24 hours even though spot volume stayed flat. That tells me leverage is creeping back in, but not in a reckless 2021 way. Funding rates are a mild +0.013%; the tape isn’t screaming blow-off yet.
Meanwhile, Glassnode reports that 32% of all ETH hasn’t moved in two years. That’s diamond-hand territory. If you’re a market maker trying to push price lower, the float you can actually shake out is shrinking by the day.
Why This Matters for Your Portfolio
If ETH defends the current range, the next logical magnet is the 0.5 fib pull from the March high—$3,450-ish. Beyond that I’m eyeing $3,850, which lines up with the August 2022 rejection wick on Coinbase. None of this is guaranteed, obviously, but the market loves filling old inefficiencies, and there’s a fairly chunky one sitting right there.
Here’s the nuance: with the ETH ETF decisions penciled in for early September, we might get one more fake-out to shake the tree. I wouldn’t be shocked to see wicks stabbing into the mid-$2,700s just to trigger stop-losses. The market is a sadist—it knows where your liquidation price lives.
Touching Base with the On-Chain Crowd
When I logged into Nansen this morning, smart money inflows showed a curious pattern: ETH itself was net flat, but LST tokens like stETH and rETH attracted $22.4 million in fresh deposits. That’s usually a tell that whales are parking long-term collateral, not panic-selling.
“If the Shanghai upgrade taught us anything, it’s that stakers are marathon runners, not sprinters.” —Lido team AMA, April 2024
Exactly. Whenever I see staking derivatives bid while price chops sideways, I assume patience is winning the day.
Remember the 2019 Ghost Town?
Let me dust off an old war story. Summer 2019: ETH was languishing around $180, and everyone proclaimed the ‘flippening narrative’ dead. I was at a meetup in Berlin where developers spoke passionately about migrating from AWS to decentralized nodes, yet investors couldn’t care less. Six months later, ETH doubled and kicked off DeFi Summer. Moral of the story? Fundamentals always catch up with price, even if they take the scenic route.
Right now we’re post-Dencun, gas is dirt-cheap, EigenLayer restaking is making headlines, and roll-ups are spitting out blockspace like popcorn. If that backdrop can’t support a higher-high eventually, I’ll eat my old Ledger Nano S.
But Wait, What About the Macro Mess?
Good question. The U.S. 10-year yield is flirting with 4.3%, and Jerome Powell keeps muttering about ‘data dependency’. A surprise CPI print could smack risk assets across the board. I’m not entirely sure how that plays out for ETH in the short run. Back in March 2020, everything tanked together. In 2022, crypto led equities lower. Lately, the correlation is wobbling around 0.29. So—confusing? Yeah.
If you’re trading on short timeframes, set alerts, not prayers. But if your horizon is a couple of halvings out, this sort of chop is background noise.
What the Big Voices Are Saying
• Arthur Hayes wrote last week that Ethereum feels like ‘sound money for the AI age’ and slapped a $5k target on it by Q4.
• Raoul Pal keeps hammering the ‘metcalfe’s law’ chart that projects a multi-trillion network cap.
• Vitalik, ever the pragmatist, is tweeting about verkle trees instead of price—but that’s bullish in its own geeky way.
These aren’t gods, but they do set the conversational tone. And right now, that tone is leaning constructive.
How I'm Positioning (Not Financial Advice, Obviously)
I grabbed a fresh chunk of spot ETH at $3,010 with a soft stop under $2,750. I’m also selling 20-delta August calls; the premium offsets my downside while keeping upside open. If we blast through $3,500 sooner than expected, fine, I’ll roll the strikes higher. Flexibility beats bravado.
I’m also farming EigenLayer points and tossing the rewards into a lazy Uniswap v4 LP. Yield stacking isn’t glamorous, but it compounds faster than doomscrolling.
Could I Be Wrong?
Absolutely. Maybe the ETF hype fizzles, maybe a black-swan regulation headline nukes sentiment, or maybe Bitcoin dominance sucks all the oxygen from the room. I’ve misread the tape before—ask me about the time I levered long XRP in 2015. Spoiler: it didn’t end with a Lambo.
Still, the resilience I’m seeing on the daily chart, the hoarding on-chain, and the mild funding tell me the path of least resistance is up. Don’t bet the farm, but don’t ignore the signal either.
Let's Wrap This Up
Ethereum is holding the line at $3k, printing higher-lows, and quietly onboarding more long-term stakers. If that doesn’t scream underlying strength, I don’t know what does. Just remember: markets love to punish late believers. Aim for informed conviction, sprinkle in humility, and keep some dry powder. The next few weeks should be fun—or at least educational.
I’ll circle back after the next daily close. Until then, stay solvent.
