Ethereum suffered perhaps the biggest hit of all large-cap altcoins in February, with its value falling more than 36% over the past month. The second-largest cryptocurrency has compounded its woes over the past week, struggling to keep its price above the $2,000 level.
On Friday, February 27, the price of Ethereum fell by more than 5%, falling just above the $1,900 mark. Interestingly, a recent on-chain valuation shows the potential reason for the altcoin’s latest struggles below $2,000.
ETH taker volume sees steady increase on Friday
In a February 27 post on the social media platform, crypto expert Maartunn revealed the source of the recent bearish pressure seen on the price of Ethereum. The relevant on-chain indicator here is taker selling volume, which saw consistent spikes across all exchanges throughout Friday.
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For further context, the Taker Sell Volume metric measures the total volume of sell orders executed by takers (market participants who match existing orders created by market makers) in Ethereum perpetual swaps. Therefore, a rise in the indicator can be interpreted as a bearish signal, implying that the market is flooded with sell orders.
As seen in the chart above, Ethereum Taker’s sales volume reached 105 million ETH on Friday. Now, this puts the ETH price decline seen that day into context, as the rise in this metric is a sign of heavy selling pressure in the market earlier.
The price of ETH, which started the day above the $2,000 mark, quickly fell to around $1,920 heading into the weekend.
Ethereum Price Overview
At the time of writing, the ETH price stands at around $1,925, reflecting a decline of over 5% in the last 24 hours. However, the action over the past week has been relatively muted, with the second-largest cryptocurrency losing almost 2% of its value over the past seven days.
The selling pressure seen on Ethereum price over the past day is not new, as has been the case over the past few weeks. This trend is visible in the recent performance of ETH exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
According to recent market data, US-based Ethereum ETFs have seen approximately 563,600 ETH (worth nearly $1.13 billion) withdrawn by investors over the past five weeks. This significant ETF outflow highlights the shift in investor sentiment and demand since the last week of January.
Market sentiment and demand must move optimistically for ETH price to witness a bullish reversal soon.
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Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView
