Ethereum’s Brutal First Half Culminates in Triple-Red Candle Record, But Buterin’s Privacy Roadmap Offers No Quick Fix
Published on 07/01/2026 at 05:58 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Ethereum has carved an unwelcome niche in its own history books. For the first time since its inception, the asset has posted three consecutive quarterly red candles, a streak that underscores the depth of the current downturn. The token was changing hands near $1,576 late in the second quarter, barely four percent above its 52-week low of $1,512. After shedding 28% in the fourth quarter of 2025, a further 29% slide in the first three months of 2026, and a 25% decline in the period just ended, the year-to-date loss now stands at nearly 48%. Measured from the August 2025 peak of roughly $4,946, the retreat has swallowed 68% of Ethereum’s value.
The market’s response to those losses has been anything but uniform. One cohort of institutional players is throwing in the towel, while another is wading in to scoop up discounted tokens. Investment firm FG Nexus unwound its entire Ethereum position, capping the process with a 9,481-ETH transfer to Galaxy Digital. The liquidation of 51,156 tokens in total is estimated to have cost the firm about $86.6 million in realized losses. On the other side of the trade, BitMine Immersion Technologies — chaired by Tom Lee — took advantage of the weakness to buy roughly 27,084 ETH for around $43 million in late June, lifting its holdings to 5.7 million tokens. Sharplink Gaming also stepped in, acquiring 10,000 ETH at an average price of $1,611, its first purchase since October. CEO Joseph Chalom framed the move as part of an active treasury strategy, backed by a $75 million capital raise.
On-chain data paints a stark picture of waning network engagement. The 14-day average of active addresses on Ethereum has slumped to roughly 420,000, a 46% drop from the February peak of 795,000. Technical signals have turned bearish, too: a death cross on the weekly chart — the 50-day moving average crossing below the 200-day — was confirmed on June 30, a pattern many traders view as a harbinger of further downside. The relative strength index hovered around 32.5, with some measures pegging it at 31.6, both deep in oversold territory. A key support sits at $1,500; a breach below that level would shift attention to the $1,200 zone. On the upside, resistance stands at $1,611, followed by the short-term moving average at $1,670.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Ethereum?
Spot Ethereum ETFs in the US recorded net outflows of roughly $8 million in the final days of June, a move some analysts attribute to quarter-end portfolio rebalancing as fund managers prune underperformers. That phenomenon, while not insignificant, may be less structural than the broader institutional divergence now playing out.
On the developmental front, the Ethereum team continues to work toward the “Glamsterdam” upgrade, though no mainnet activation date has been set. Developers are currently in the final devnet phase. The upgrade is expected to introduce enshrined proposer-builder separation and block-level access lists, both aimed at boosting Layer-1 throughput. Whether those technical improvements arrive quickly enough to restore market confidence remains the central question for the third quarter.
A separate, longer-term initiative also captured attention this week. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a detailed note on “indistinguishability obfuscation” (iO), a cryptographic technique that hides not just data but the code itself, turning programs into encrypted black boxes that still accept normal inputs. Buterin described iO as a potential complement to Ethereum’s public ledger, enabling applications such as private voting systems without a central authority. Yet he cautioned that current runtimes are “literally galactic” and that the math underpinning iO remains far from practical deployment. The technology ranks somewhere near where SNARKs stood around 2010 — promising in theory, but years of optimization lie ahead before it could integrate with live smart contracts. For investors searching for a near-term price catalyst from privacy advancements, Buterin’s timeline offers little comfort.
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