After falling below $1,800 earlier this month, Ethereum’s price has since regained the $2,000 level, which is considered a psychological support zone for many traders. However, over the past week, the price has shown mild downward pressure, making it difficult to sustainably stay above the $2,000 level.
Whale activity signals a potential increase in volatility in the Ethereum markets
In a post on the X platform, crypto analyst Joao Wedson says declared that there has been a major change in the behavior of Ethereum’s major holders. The market expert also pointed out that there may be something deeper going on beneath the surface.
🐳Whales continue to distribute and sell Ethereum.
Addresses holding between 100,000 and 1 million ETH have drastically reduced their reserves over the past 90 days. That is an important and remarkable shift.
What is even more striking is that a large part of this reduction is not… pic.twitter.com/UblikDUQf3
— Joao Wedson (@joao_wedson) February 27, 2026
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Wedson claimed that wallet addresses holding between 100,000 and 1,000,000 ETH have significantly reduced their holdings over the past 90 days, showing that large holders are selling or moving large amounts of ETH. What’s more interesting is that this deprecation is happening on non-exchanged whale portfolios.
🐳Whales continue to distribute and sell Ethereum.
Addresses holding between 100,000 and 1 million ETH have drastically reduced their reserves over the past 90 days. That is an important and remarkable shift.
What is even more striking is that a large part of this reduction is not… pic.twitter.com/UblikDUQf3
— Joao Wedson (@joao_wedson) February 27, 2026
In other words, large retail ETH holders, institutions, or early investors may actively reduce their exposure, and this could indicate taking profits, taking risks, or preparing for volatility. Overall, Wedson noted that when this group of whales begins to relax their positions, it often means a structural shift is taking place beneath the surface.
At the time of writing, Ethereum’s price is around $2,010, marking an increase of almost 5% in the last 24 hours.
A slumping global context has the greatest impact on ETH
According to a recent on-chain observation, this strategic move by major ETH holders could be related to the deteriorating macroeconomic conditions. Pseudonymous analyst Darkfost, in a Quicktake post on the CryptoQuant platform showed that the global economic backdrop is slowly losing momentum, and Ethereum seems to be the hardest hit altcoin so far.
Starting with the risky global environment, Darkfost referred to the core producer price index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level. The Core PPI MoM of +0.8% confirmed the persistence of inflation, indicating that the Federal Reserve is unlikely to cut rates anytime soon, which is unfavorable for risky assets.
Moreover, the rising tension between the United States and Iran increases geopolitical uncertainty. On Saturday, the US and Israel announced military actions against Iran, causing crypto prices to plummet this weekend.
However, Ethereum’s Open Interest (OI) across all exchanges fell from 7.79 million ETH to 5.8 million ETH, with around 2 million of that concentrated on Binance. This shows traders closing their positions and leverage being reduced, while ETH exposure is also decreasing.
Additionally, the Notional OI, which measures the total dollar value of open contracts, saw a sharper decline as positions were closed. For example, Binance’s Open Interest fell from more than $12.6 billion to $4.1 billion, while Bybit’s fell by two-thirds to $1.9 billion. This indicates broad deleveraging across the entire market and not just one platform.
Overall, the Ethereum derivatives market is shrinking as traders deleverage in response to macroeconomic and geopolitical pressures. Furthermore, current market conditions are not particularly encouraging for investors’ risk appetite, as we see with the ETH whales.
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Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView