Are ‘busy’ Ethereum whales a sign of big players getting ready for a big move?

The broader crypto market crashed following poor-than-expected macroeconomic data from the United States. Investors pulled significant capital out of risky assets and turned to capital preservation.

As a result, crypto assets, especially Ethereum, recorded notable losses across the board. The altcoin breached the $2k support again, hitting a low of $1956 before rebounding slightly. 

With ETH facing a greater risk of downside, it would seem that whales might be stepping in across Futures and Spot markets to take positions.

Ethereum whales in the Futures show bearishness

After Ethereum fell below $2k, some long holders were forced out of the market. Long position liquidations surpassed $56 million according to Coinglass data.

With longs facing liquidations, some whales flipped and turned to short positions, according to Onchain Lens. In fact, a whale deposited $2.18 million into Hyperliquid and opened an ETH short position with 10x leverage.

Interestingly, this was not an isolated case either as ETH saw a significant increase in short positions too. CoinGlass revealed that the altcoin’s Long/Short Ratio fell below 1, dropping to 0.96 at press time.

This finding suggested that Futures participants were bearish and took short positions, in anticipation of further losses.

Dormant whale stakes ETH worth $16 million

While whales on the Futures are betting against the market, others have exhibited more long-term optimism. Thanks to a prolonged bearish structure, long-term holders, especially whales, have seen their profit margins erode, while others have fallen into unrealized losses.

These prevailing conditions prompted a dormant whale to wake up after a year and turn to staking. Onchain Lens reported that the whale staked 8,208 ETH, worth $16.85 million, with Kiln_finance.

Initially, this whale had accumulated these tokens for $16.09 million over four years. Now, his assets sit at only $768k in unrealized profits – A significant drop from their 2025 peak.

Typically, when whales choose staking over market closure during a dip, it is a sign of strong confidence in the market. Thus, the whale is positioned for the long haul and expects the phase to pass.

Can ETH hold $2k?

Ethereum failed to hold above $2k thanks to intense downside pressure. Although whale activity across the market has been elevated, their demand-side activity proved inadequate in driving ETH higher. Hence, a potential upside move was not triggered.

On the contrary, downside momentum has grown in strength lately, as evidenced by the DMI-ADX Smoothing indicator.

Based on this indicator, the positive momentum has been weak, sitting within the oversold territory at 20. At the same time, the negative index sat above the +DI at 22 – Evidence of bearish bias.

Worth pointing out, however, that based on the Future Grand Trend indicator, Ethereum could recover from this slip and climb to $2186, before dropping to $1.8k.

Final Summary

• A whale deposited $2.18 million into Hyperliquid and opened an ETH short position with 10x leverage.
• A dormant Ethereum whale returned after a year and staked 8,208 ETH, worth $16.85 million.