Binance and Coinbase wallets just dumped millions worth of Ethereum, and they didn’t do it quietly. This was a coordinated takedown to flush leveraged longs.
Once the market collapsed and those positions were gone, the same hands that sold started pumping the price right back up.
The Friday crash didn’t come out of nowhere. The entire crypto market had been sliding for days, and then it buckled. More than $708 million in liquidations hit across the board, most of them long positions. Traders using leverage got wiped out. Ethereum was hit harder than most, dropping from $4,000 to $3,500 in five days. That’s a 10% drop.
Traders lose billions as tensions rise
At the same time, Bitcoin dropped from nearly $120,000 to $114,000. That 5.6% dip followed a brief recovery attempt after the Fed left interest rates unchanged. But macro pressure didn’t let up. U.S. jobs data came in weaker than expected.
And then Mr. Donald Trump told reporters he’d ordered nuclear submarines toward Russian waters. That statement triggered a new round of panic selling.
Glassnode analysts warned days earlier that Bitcoin’s rally could collapse under pressure. They said a fall below $110,000 would likely speed up selling, which would usually lead to another surge. That pattern has played out before. During Trump’s first round of tariff announcements, Bitcoin dropped from $100K to $75K. It wasn’t forgotten.
The recent downturn has been brutal. More than 160,930 traders lost positions in the crash. That included over $600 million in longs. Bitcoin’s collapse and Ethereum’s faster decline drained around $500 billion from the overall crypto market. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index dropped to 55, a noticeable slide from previous highs.
ETFs dump Ether after record inflows
The selloff didn’t just hit spot traders. After a 20-day streak of inflows, Ethereum ETFs broke their run with a total $152.26 million outflow on Friday. The money pulled out came after weeks of inflows that pushed Ethereum higher. Now the trend has reversed.
Grayscale’s ETHE lost the most with $47.68 million in withdrawals. Bitwise’s ETHW followed, bleeding $40.30 million. Fidelity’s FETH posted $6.17 million in outflows. Only BlackRock’s ETHA saw no movement, staying flat with $10.71 billion in total assets.
Combined trading volume across all Ethereum ETFs hit $2.26 billion for the day. Grayscale led again with $288.96 million in trades. That volatility lines up with the broader crypto market chaos.
Just days before, on July 16, Ethereum ETFs saw their highest daily inflow ever, $726.74 million. On July 17, another $602.02 million came in. Those back-to-back records pointed to massive demand. But Friday’s flip shows how fast momentum can vanish.
While retail got crushed, institutions are still buying. Standard Chartered reported that corporations have been acquiring Ethereum at twice the rate of Bitcoin. Since June, crypto treasuries picked up 1% of the total ETH supply.
Geoff Kendrick, Head of FX Research at the bank, said the buildup, along with the ETF inflows, was a major reason Ethereum had been climbing in recent months. He said that if demand stays at this pace, ETH could cross back over $4,000 by the end of the year.
Looking forward, Geoff said treasury holdings could rise to 10% of total ETH supply. He pointed to the benefits of staking and DeFi as the main drivers.
