Ethereum’s price slipped below $4,400 Friday morning, days after setting a new all-time high.
ETH has since recovered to just over $4,400, but remains down by 4.4% on the day, outpacing the broader crypto market’s 2.6% drop, according to CoinGecko data.
The decline comes after Ethereum set a new all-time high of $4,946.05 on August 24, with the token now down 11% from that peak. Despite the downturn, ETH remains up 16.6% over the past month and 73.2% over the past three months.
The latest fall comes after Ethereum struggled to sustain momentum earlier this year, lagging behind Bitcoin’s surge to record highs. A resurgence of investor interest, however, has emerged in recent weeks, supported by large publicly traded treasuries steadily accumulating ETH.
Institutions buying ETH
According to CoinGecko data, eleven institutions now hold more than 3 million ETH, worth around $13 billion.
Among the largest is SharpLink Gaming, which announced Tuesday that it added roughly $252 million in Ethereum to its reserves, buying 55,463 ETH at an average price of $4,462. The purchase lifted its total holdings to 797,704 ETH valued at $3.6 billion.
The company, which began life as a gambling marketing firm, has pivoted toward an Ethereum-focused treasury strategy and counts Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as its board chair.
“Our regimented execution of SharpLink’s ETH treasury strategy continues to demonstrate the strength of our vision,” said SharpLink co-CEO Joseph Shalom in a statement, adding that the company sees itself as both building long-term shareholder value and supporting the Ethereum ecosystem.
Earlier this week, a research note by Standard Chartered called Ethereum’s pullback a “great entry point,” and arguing that ETH would hit $7,500 by the end of the year. The bank’s head of digital assets Geoffrey Kendrick pointed to Ethereum treasury companies and exchange-traded funds scooping up the available supply of ETH, arguing that they are “just getting started.”
On prediction market Myriad (launched by Decrypt‘s parent company DASTAN), users are inclined to agree with Standard Chartered’s bullish outlook, with almost 80% expecting ETH to hit $5,000 in 2025.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s fundamentals are showing strain, with an exit queue of over 1 million ETH set to be withdrawn from staking, contributing to record transaction wait times and highlighting the chain’s persistent scaling challenges.
The turbulence comes as the broader crypto market steadies after a weekend sell-off triggered by a Bitcoin whale unloading $2.7 billion worth of BTC, which cascaded into forced liquidations and sharp price swings across major tokens.
