According to Woofun AI, on September 18, the price of Ethereum climbed strongly above $2,600, hitting the $2,630 mark, the highest level since the end of January. This market occurred in the context of most altcoins leading the market rebound, yet its order flow data showed abnormal characteristics that deviated from the price: on the Binance platform, the sell-off behavior of traders for several weeks did not cause prices to fall, but instead achieved a price breakthrough in a trading environment dominated by sales.
The CryptoQuant chart shared by Amr Taha reveals the core details of this paradox. According to the data, the cumulative net sales volume reached negative 903 million US dollars, which means that on the Binance market, the number of market-price sell orders requiring immediate execution significantly exceeded the corresponding number of purchase orders.
Notably, when net sales volume showed such a huge negative value, the price of Ethereum was still around $2,460 before rising above $2,630 again. This divergence between price trends and order flows shows that aggressive selling has failed to control the direction of the market. The value of open contracts at the time was around $3 billion, below the recent high of around $3.3 billion. This data ruled out the possibility that a sudden increase in leverage was the sole driver of the price increase.
The more critical variable is that despite increasing selling pressure, prices have remained relatively stable, which suggests that passive buyers may have accepted the sell order by lowering the price limit order. Demand may also come from other trading platforms, institutional trading departments, or on-chain trading venues. Since the chart only covers data from the Binance platform and does not reflect the overall state of the Ethereum market, it is impossible to determine exactly which buyers provided supporting buying power. Available evidence tends to suggest that those aggressive sales were matched and traded time and time again, but failed to drive the price down. Once the selling power waned, Ethereum continued to rise with less additional buying power.
Data compiled by Woofun AI showed that Santiment's data further confirmed signs of activity among large holders. When the price of Ethereum reached its highest point in January, the number of transactions worth more than $100,000 increased, indicating that giant whales became more active during the price increase, although the data did not clearly indicate whether they were buying, selling, or transferring funds between different wallets.
At the same time, the number of non-empty Ethereum addresses set a record of 207 million, reflecting an increase in on-chain activity, but it is important to note that the same holder can control multiple wallets, and inactive addresses are also included in the total, so this does not directly prove that giant whales are accumulating ETH.
Furthermore, more than 40 million ETH are currently being staked, and the total amount of staked funds shown by the Ethereum staking platform is about 43 million, accounting for about 35% of the circulating supply. Although verification nodes can retrieve tokens after completing the exit process, and staking does not permanently remove the supply, the huge staking scale does reduce the amount of ETH available for instant transactions.
If sales become less aggressive and part of ETH is still staked, even if demand only increases moderately, it may have a big impact on the price. This logic is consistent with the data on the Binance platform.
In terms of future market outlook, the price of Ethereum broke through the $2,630 level, reaching a level not reached since January, but a single day increase was not enough to form effective support. It is only when the closing price of the day remains above this level that we can confirm that this breakthrough has been completed.
If the price continues to be above this level in subsequent transactions, or if it returns to this level and attracts buyers, then it is more proof that the market has accepted the higher price range. Conversely, if the price quickly reverses back below $2,630, it means that those aggressive Binance sales have only been temporarily contained and have not been completely digested. At the same time, there are signs that market demand has weakened after the Ethereum price reached its highest point in several months. Therefore, the first meaningful profit settlement should show a more obvious trend than the initial price increase.
If Ethereum can maintain this breakout point while net selling pressure remains negative or begins to ease, then it indicates that buyers are capable of accepting sales at a higher price level. However, if the price falls back to the previous range, then the increasing trading volume and wallet activity of giant whales will be more reflected in fluctuations within the rebound range rather than strong demand.