Ethereum Price News: Traders Position for a Rally to $3K Despite the Latest Pullback

Ethereum (ETH) continues to face some selling pressure at around $2,100 as the market continues to consolidate ahead of its next big move.

This top altcoin has accumulated a 12% loss in the past 30 days as ETF inflows turned bearish.

According to data from Farside Investors, Wall Street investors have pulled out $470 million from these funds in the past 10 days. This is a long streak of outflows that reflects the market’s skepticism of Ethereum’s latest rally to $2,400.

Paired with depressed sentiment readings in the Fear and Greed Index, we still seem to be in the late stage of this bear market and the very beginning of the next bullish phase.

What exactly could drive ETH higher right now? Well, the passing of the Clarity Act in the United States could be the catalyst that the crypto market needs to get things going.

This would open up the floodgates to a whole new era for the decentralized finance (DeFi) segment, and Ethereum is at the center of that trend as the largest network in terms of total value locked (TVL) both in that space and the real-world assets (RAW) segment.

Trading Volumes Remain Thin as Bearish Sentiment Persists

At the beginning of May, we saw transaction volumes within the Ethereum blockchain climb to a new all-time high of 21.8 million. The last time this happened, ETH was trading at a much higher price.

Higher usage indicates strong movement under the hood, possibly in stablecoin transfers, micro-transactions, DeFi, and RWAs. The Clarity Act should drive higher volumes to the blockchain as well, which should, in turn, result in a higher valuation down the road.

Transaction volumes have climbed once again for two weeks in a row after dropping sharply from that all-time high despite the latest pullback.

We have been keeping an eye on an interesting signal that tracks Ethereum’s moving averages for trading volumes for the last 7 days and 30 days.

Whenever there’s a bullish crossover between these two lines (the 7-day MA rises past the 30-day MA), we have seen a strong rally in ETH’s price right after.

Right now, the two lines are running in parallel, meaning that volumes remain heavily depressed compared to historical levels.

What this means in practice is that interest in ETH as an investment, or even for speculative purposes, is still quite low.

Futures Market Heats Up as OI (in ETH) Hits New Record

We need a combination of FOMO, organic buying, and higher open interest (OI) in the futures market to officially declare that this bear market is over.

Of those three factors, we are only seeing strong momentum in the futures market. According to data from CoinGlass, the amount of outstanding futures contracts linked to Ethereum climbed to a new all-time high recently, exceeding the 15 million ETH mark for the first time since July 2025.

We prefer to analyze OI in ETH terms, as that eliminates the significant impact of price variations. What this indicates is that speculators are positioning for a big move ahead.

Based on what we are seeing in ETH’s latest price action, the most likely scenario is a strong bounce off $2,000, followed by a bullish breakout of the 200-day exponential moving average (EMA) over the next few weeks.

We could still see ETH dropping to its recent cycle low of $1,800, but we no longer expect a bearish breakout below that market – and speculators don’t seem to be expecting that either.

Instead, we see a path to $2,800 and an interesting trade featuring a 4x risk-reward ratio if we get a confirmed bounce off $2,000 in the next couple of days.