Ethereum’s $4,000 Dream Smashes Into a Brutal Sell Wall—Can Bulls Break Through?
Ethereum's rally hits a brick wall as whales dump massive resistance at $4,000. The second-largest crypto by market cap keeps teasing a breakout, but paper-handed traders keep cashing out.
Greed meets gravity.
Traders are watching order books like hawks—someone dropped a mountain of sell orders right at ETH's psychological milestone. Classic crypto: everyone wants the moon until it's time to hold through volatility.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin maximalists are smugly sipping coffee. 'Should've bought BTC,' they whisper—ignoring the fact Ethereum's ecosystem actually builds things while they HODL a 'digital gold' that mostly collects dust.
Next 48 hours will decide if this is a healthy pullback or the start of another 'buy the rumor, sell the news' cycle. Either way, leverage traders will get rekt.
Key Insights:
- Ethereum price dragged lower as traders opened massive sell orders of 68K ETH worth $263 million between $3,850 and $4,000.
- Some whales started booking profits as ETH price rallied above the $3,850 mark.
- Analyst Michael van de Poppe predicted a small correction of 12% to $3,300 in the coming days.
Ethereum price, earlier set to cross above $4,000, suddenly faced significant selling pressure with ETH price sliding towards $3,600 on Tuesday. This means the much-anticipated rally could get delayed.
Bullish ETH news, including ethereum raising block gas limit to 45 million and capital rotation from BTC to ETH, failed to avoid a drop in prices.
Ethereum Price Rally Faces Huge Sell Wall
In an X post on July 22, CoinGlass revealed that its Spot Order Heatmap showed someone trying to suppress ETH rally.
The order heatmap highlighted a massive sell wall of 68K ETH worth $263 million between $3,850 and $4,000. This signaled traders or whales opened short positions on ETH, betting for a drop in Ethereum price.
Notably, ETH recorded $175 million in total liquidation in the last 24 hours. This included $145 million in long positions liquidation.
Whales Selling Some Ethereum Holdings
Lookonchain pointed out some whales started booking profits as ethereum price rallied above the $3,850 mark.
Whale 0x8C08 sold 8,005 ETH worth $30.03 million, after purchasing 9,582 ETH $26.11 million at $2,725. The whale made $9.87 million profit in just two weeks.
The “Mysterious Whale” AguilaTrades closed his ETH long position and deposited another 5.28M USDC to Hyperliquid. It flipped to Bitcoin and opened a long position on Bitcoin with 20x leverage, with a position of 1,695 BTC worth $200.5 million.
At the time of writing, Whale Alert also reported 15,478 ETH worth $57 million transferred from unknown wallet to Cumberland. The market Maker sold 31,000 ETH worth $118 million to Coinbase Institutional.
Whales sold part ETH holdings despite rising Altcoin Season Index and Google searches for “altcoins” just hitting a 4-year high. It marked the first time ETH surpassed 50 in several months, indicating altcoins gaining relative strength over Bitcoin.
Ethereum Price Drops Below $3,700
Multiple analysts noted a slowdown in Ethereum price rally and altcoins after a big week. However, this also gives an opportunity to scoop some top coins.
Popular crypto analyst Michael van de Poppe pointed out a small correction in altcoins after a massive run upwards. ETH fell to $3,650 but hasn’t taken much liquidity out of the market yet.
He predicted a consolidation in Ethereum price, adding that “there’s still a violent correction to come.” He targeted ETH price to drop 12% to $3,300.
Ethereum price tumbled 4% in the past 24 hours, with the price trading at $3,699 at the time of writing. The 24-hour low and high were $3,624 and $3,856, respectively.
However, trading volume increased slightly by 9% over the last 24 hours, coinciding with economist Peter Schiff’s recommendation to rotate from ETH to BTC.
In contrast, CoinGlass data showed buying activity in the derivatives market. At the time of writing, the total ETH futures open interest jumped 1.45% to $58.21 billion in the last 4 hours.
ETH futures OI on CME and Binance climbed more than 0.19% and 1.17% in the past hour, respectively. This signals bullish sentiment among derivatives traders.
