Ethereum Price Forecast – ETH-USD Tests $1,900 After Vitalik’s $16M February Sale

Ethereum Price Forecast – ETH-USD Tests $1,900 After Vitalik’s $16M February Sale

ETH-USD bounces from a 20-day low at $1,844 as founder selling, record whale inflows, and a potential floor near $1,770 clash with heavy resistance around $2,000–$2,250 | That's TradingNEWS

TradingNEWS Archive 2/23/2026 12:15:17 PM
Crypto ETH/USD ETH USD

Ethereum Price ETH-USD At A High-Volatility Pivot Around $1,900

ETH-USD is trading around the $1,900 handle after tagging a fresh 20-day low near $1,844.19. The last range printed between roughly $1,844 and $1,958, with the Meyka snapshot showing $1,918.79, down about 1.5% on the day and almost 33% over the month. The broader damage is clear: from recent highs above $3,500 to the current band, the drawdown is in the mid-30% area and still unfolding rather than fully repaired. Price now sits far below the 50-day moving average near $2,683.73 and the 200-day average around $3,514.14, leaving ETH-USD roughly a quarter below its short-term trend line and more than 40% below the longer-term gauge. As long as those moving averages stay overhead, the market is trading in a confirmed downtrend, not a sideways pause.

Short-Term Structure For ETH-USD: Expanded Ranges, Compressed Confidence

Daily trading ranges have widened sharply. Average True Range around 156 points means a “normal” session now swings $150–$160, not $50–$70. The Keltner lower band sits near $1,916.93 and has been challenged from below, while the lower Bollinger band sits far deeper around $1,464.64. Price closing outside or on the edge of those volatility envelopes shows expansion, not compression. The 1-year low near $1,383.26 and model levels around $1,370.11 on the downside and $2,731.37 and $2,960.01 on the upside define a very wide probabilistic corridor. Within that corridor, the current zone between $1,844 and $2,000 is where short-term positioning tension is concentrated, and every minor headline is amplified by the bigger volatility regime.

Momentum And Trend Strength: Oversold Readings, But The Downtrend Is Still In Charge For ETH-USD

Momentum gauges make the situation very clear. RSI sits near 31.5, hugging the classic oversold threshold, while ADX near 47 signals a strong, directional trend rather than noise. That combination — low RSI, high ADX — rarely marks the start of a breakdown; it usually appears after a move has done a lot of work already. MACD lines remain below zero, signalling a negative trend, even as the histogram has ticked slightly positive around 2.88, an early sign that downside momentum is losing some force. Stochastic %K around 29 echoes that picture of weak upside drive, not yet a confirmed reversal. The message is simple: ETH-USD is stretched to the downside, but the market has not yet flipped into a controlled recovery phase.

Vitalik Buterin’s 1,869 ETH Sale: Small In Size, Large In Headline Weight For ETH-USD

Founder activity is the core narrative driver in the near term. Over the past two days, Vitalik Buterin sold around 1,869 ETH, worth about $3.7 million at prices close to $1,950. That move followed a withdrawal of 3,500 ETH from Aave and lifted his February disposals to roughly 8,800 ETH, around $16 million. During the latest two-day window, ETH-USD dropped from about $1,988 to the $1,875 region, roughly a 5–6% slide, and earlier, a 6,958-ETH sale lined up with a decline from about $2,360 to $1,825, a drop of almost 23%. The market is reading a pattern: whenever the co-founder steps up selling during weakness, confidence cracks further, even if the actual volume is small relative to daily turnover.

Why Vitalik’s Selling Does Not Break Liquidity, But Does Hurt Sentiment Around ETH-USD

Measured against the size of the ETH-USD market, the direct liquidity impact is modest. Spot and derivatives volume frequently runs around $17 billion a day, so the roughly $16 million sold this month accounts for about 0.1% of a typical 24-hour turnover. On that basis, there is no structural supply shock. The issue is psychological and timing-based: repeated sales during a fragile phase reinforce the idea that rallies are for de-risking, not for adding exposure. That is why the February sequence matters more than the headline notional. At the same time, Buterin still holds around 224,000+ ETH, roughly $430 million at the $1,900 level. His net exposure remains huge, and he has already said that a large January withdrawal of 16,384 ETH was intended to fund ecosystem-support projects rather than to abandon the asset. So there is signalling risk, but not a wholesale exit.

On-Chain Picture: Historic Accumulation Versus Weak Tape For ETH-USD

While headlines focus on founder selling, on-chain flows show the other side of the ledger. In one 24-hour window, more than $490.9 million of ETH moved into newly created wallets, about 2.4 times a typical day. Whale wallets added about $39.2 million, roughly 30.7 times above average inflows. Top profit-and-loss wallets accumulated $46.9 million, and exchanges saw $56.9 million in outflows. Taken together, this is one of the strongest accumulation bursts in recent years at the address level. MVRV metrics from Santiment flag ETH-USD as oversold, a condition that historically has preceded multi-month recoveries once price closes back above realised-price bands. For now, that data shows large and sophisticated capital stepping in while the headline crowd is nervous.

Realised Price, Cycle History And The $1,770–$1,367 Floor Zone For ETH-USD

Past cycles offer useful markers. In 2022, ETH-USD sank roughly 39% below realised price before forming a durable low. In 2025, the maximum deviation was closer to 21% below realised price. Applying those ranges to the current environment points to a potential support corridor near $1,770 on the shallow end and around $1,367 on the deeper end. Recent trading has already tagged lows near $1,747 on large exchanges, putting spot not far from that upper band. A key Fundstrat scenario suggests that as long as ETH-USD holds above roughly $1,300, a rebound of up to 80% over the following 12 months remains plausible. That upside path would imply a medium-term target in the region of $3,400 if the floor around $1,770–$1,370 does its job.

U.S. Flow Signals: Coinbase Premium Still Negative For ETH-USD

Regional order flow remains an important missing piece. While new wallets and global whales are absorbing supply, U.S. demand has not turned convincingly positive. The Coinbase Premium Index, which compares ETH-USD prices on U.S. venues to those on offshore exchanges, remains negative, signalling that American desks are still net sellers or at best passive. Earlier in February there was a brief improvement, but it never translated into sustained net buying. Historically, the strongest Ethereum recoveries have coincided with U.S. spot and ETF flows flipping to steady accumulation. Without that shift, the market can bounce technically but will struggle to build a persistent trend back toward the 50-day and 200-day averages.

Futures Curve And Structural Bias: ETH-USD Slides Out Of Balance And Into Expansion

Futures behaviour confirms that ETH-USD has left the comfort zone. After weeks of compression, the 4-hour futures chart printed a large range expansion candle with strong negative delta, a close below the lower Bollinger band and a visible rise in ATR. That marks a transition from rotation to momentum, and momentum regimes statistically favour continuation until the market finds a fresh equilibrium. A structural score of −5 on a −10 to +10 scale captures this environment: there is clear bearish pressure with moderate confidence, but not yet a final washout. The weekly footprint shows prior high-volume support zones giving way, value migrating lower and sell-side volume clusters dominating. This is more than a quick shake-out on headlines about tariffs or single wallets; it is a genuine structural test of the medium-term trend.

Key Futures And Spot Supports: $1,844, $1,748.50, $1,770, Then $1,525 And $1,455 For ETH-USD

Immediate support on spot is the $1,844.19 session low. Just beneath that, the February 6 pivot near $1,748.50 on futures is the first structural level algorithms will probe. The on-chain realised-price logic adds the $1,770 band as a reference, meaning the $1,770–$1,748 pocket is the first meaningful demand zone. If that breaks cleanly with acceptance — not just wicks — the deeper supports near $1,525 and $1,455 on the weekly futures structure come into view as the next areas where high-volume activity and historical reaction points cluster. Even further down, the Bollinger lower band near $1,464.64, the one-year low around $1,383.26 and the model band around $1,370.11 mark the bottom of the current downside corridor. A decisive failure of that entire stack would turn this from a deep correction into something closer to a cycle reset.

 

Resistance Map And Repair Thresholds: $1,958, $2,000, $2,250 And $2,683 For ETH-USD

On the upside, the intraday high near $1,958.13 is first resistance, followed by the $2,000 round number, which carries both psychological and technical weight. A clean daily close above $2,000 would show that sellers cannot push every bounce back down immediately. Above that, the Bollinger mid-band around $2,249.90 is the next test, and a string of closes above $2,250 would be the first serious sign that the downtrend is weakening. From there, the 50-day moving average near $2,683.73 becomes the key line in the sand. As long as ETH-USD trades beneath that moving average, the market is in a rally-within-a-downtrend, not a fresh bull leg. Closing above $2,683 and holding that level would open the door to the quarterly model area around $2,731.37 and eventually toward the yearly band near $2,960.01 if macro conditions cooperate.

Macro And Cross-Asset Context: Ethereum Weak While BTC-USD Also Bleeds

The current slide in ETH-USD is not happening in isolation. BTC-USD is trading around the mid-$60,000s with a loss of roughly 2–3% on the day, and broader risk assets have absorbed fresh shocks from tariff headlines and uncertainty around global trade policy. One news burst tied a drop in Ether from about $1,957 to the mid-$1,850s to a move by the U.S. administration to push global tariffs from 10% to 15%, but professional order-flow analysis argues that the latest flush has more to do with an internal regime shift in crypto than with macro alone. When both Bitcoin and Ethereum sell off together and volatility jumps, cross-asset desks often de-risk their entire digital-asset book, which magnifies short-term moves in names like ETH-USD regardless of idiosyncratic on-chain strength.

Positioning, Volatility And Risk Management For ETH-USD At This Stage

With ATR above 150 points and structural bias negative, the key variable is not just direction but sizing. Wide ranges mean that leverage cuts both ways quickly. Traders who insist on operating inside this environment need stops placed beyond the typical daily noise band and position sizes that assume several hundred dollars of adverse movement is entirely possible within a single session. The combination of oversold oscillators, high ADX and strong on-chain accumulation creates an attractive risk-reward setup for those willing to hold through volatility, but only if the capital allocated is small enough that a retest of $1,770, $1,525 or even $1,455 does not force forced liquidation.

Scenario Matrix For ETH-USD: Bearish Continuation, Range Repair Or Oversold Rebound

Three paths dominate from here. In the bearish continuation scenario, ETH-USD loses $1,844 and then $1,748.50 with high volume and no sharp rejection. Price then gravitates toward the $1,525–$1,455 cluster, volatility remains high and MVRV stays depressed until a capitulation flush prints a spike low near or below the $1,370 band. In the range-repair scenario, spot holds between $1,844 and $1,770, repeatedly rejects probes into that pocket, pushes through $1,958 and $2,000, and grinds toward $2,250 while futures volatility starts to compress. In the oversold rebound scenario, whale accumulation and MVRV signals drive a fast short-covering move back through $2,000 and toward $2,250–$2,350, followed by a consolidation under the 50-day average near $2,683 as the market decides whether to extend or fade the rally. The quality of order flow around $1,770 on any retest will decide which path gains probability.

ETH-USD: Strategic View – Bearish Tape, But Accumulation And Cycle Metrics Point To A Cautious Buy

Putting all the elements together — founder selling, historic address-level accumulation, deeply negative momentum, expanded volatility and the realised-price framework — the tape remains bearish in the short term, but the structural backdrop is starting to resemble a late-stage drawdown rather than the middle of a new collapse. The $1,770–$1,370 band is a credible long-term floor zone, with strong on-chain inflows and MVRV oversold readings backing that view. At the same time, futures structure and ADX argue that sellers still control the pace for now. That mix justifies a clear stance: ETH-USD earns a tactical buy label for a 12- to 18-month horizon, but only for capital sized to tolerate further downside toward $1,525 or even $1,455 and with a strict invalidation if the entire support stack around $1,370 fails. Short-term, the burden of proof remains with the upside; medium-term, the combination of accumulation, prior cycle behaviour and depressed prices tilts the balance in favour of accumulation rather than capitulation.

That's TradingNEWS