Ethereum ($ETH) is moving towards a point that it has never faced before. The second-largest crypto is yet to print three consecutive quarters in the red in its entire history. However, that streak is now under pressure as Ether seems to be losing momentum.
CoinGlass data shows that Ether posted a negative quarter 4 in 2025. Q1 2026 followed the same path, and now Q2 is underway. Traders are watching closely to see whether $ETH can avoid a historic third straight quarterly decline. Till now, it has been running up by more than 11% this fiscal quarter.
Back in 2022, Bitcoin saw a complete year of red quarterly indexes. Ether managed to break the cycle of back-to-back three negative quarters that year and printed gains of 24% in Q3. However, it still reported a loss of almost 10% in Q4. Since then, there have been only 2 instances when the second biggest crypto reported two consecutive red quarters.
Ether under pressure?
The backdrop is not particularly encouraging as $ETH has fallen more than 35% against Bitcoin over the past year. Charts show that Ether price has dropped by over 21% since the beginning of this year. Bitcoin has followed a similar trajectory and remained down by 6% in the same period. $BTC has managed to hold its dominance above 60%.
Ether is steadily losing value compared to Bitcoin. It recently hit a “ceiling” and is now falling below key support levels. It is mirroring a major crash from 2024. Analysts warn that if this weakness continues, $ETH could drop another 40% against $BTC.
Exchange data is raising fresh questions around sell-side pressure. According to CryptoQuant, Binance’s $ETH reserves have climbed to 3.62 million $ETH. This represents nearly 24.6% of all Ether held on exchanges. Such a surge is often seen as a sign of a sell-off coming in ahead, as traders might be preparing to dump them into the market. Ether’s Open Interest saw a marginal jump in the last 24 hours.
Ethereum price has dropped by around 2% in the last 7 days but it is still up by 3.3% over the past 30 days. $ETH is trading at $2,337 at the press time. Bitcoin is having a mild upward run. $BTC price is up by more than 2% in the last 7 days and almost 12% over the past 30 days. Bitcoin is trading at $81,920 at the press time.
Is $ETH entering Crypto Spring?
Not everyone is convinced the situation is bearish. Some market participants pointed to renewed panic around recent sales by the Ethereum Foundation. It is being argued that the reaction may be overblown.
The Ethereum Foundation has been regularly selling $ETH. It sold off a part of its holdings for operational costs. This includes grants, salaries, and development funding. Cryptopolitan reported that the Foundation’s unstaking activity (approx worth $49.6 million) sparked fresh speculation online. However, this cannot confirm that a dump is incoming.
The institutional accumulation has not disappeared. BitMine Immersion Technologies might have slowed but not stopped. It is still the world’s largest Ethereum treasury company. The firm purchased another 26,659 $ETH last week. This brings the total holdings above 5.2 million $ETH. That’s around 4.3% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. More than 90% of those holdings are now staked through BitMine’s MAVAN staking platform.
Tom Lee stated the company intentionally reduced its pace of purchases after weeks of buying over 100,000 $ETH per week. That would have pushed BitMine toward owning 5% of the total supply by mid-July.
He highlighted that among the key future drivers for Ethereum, the two primary are Wall Street’s move to tokenization and agentic AI. Lee added that if $ETH closes above $2,100 at the end of May 2026, this would be the third consecutive monthly gain. This might ensure that there never been seen in a crypto bear market. Thus, a close above $2,100 would validate that ‘crypto spring’ has arrived.”
Flows into crypto ETFs also suggest that institutional sentiment is stabilizing. Crypto ETFs posted around $857.9 million in inflows last week. Bitcoin-linked ETFs reported an inflow of more than $622 million last week. Ether ETFs brought in over $70 million in the same period.
