decrypt.co
Ethereum's price slipped below $4,400 Friday morning, days after setting a new all-time high.
$ETH has since recovered to just over $4,400, but remains down by 4.4% on the day, outpacing the broader crypto market’s 2.6% drop, according to CoinGecko data.
The decline comes after Ethereum set a new all-time high of $4,946.05 on August 24, with the token now down 11% from that peak. Despite the downturn, $ETH remains up 16.6% over the past month and 73.2% over the past three months.
The latest fall comes after Ethereum struggled to sustain momentum earlier this year, lagging behind Bitcoin’s surge to record highs. A resurgence of investor interest, however, has emerged in recent weeks, supported by large publicly traded treasuries steadily accumulating $ETH.
Institutions buying $ETH
According to CoinGecko data, eleven institutions now hold more than 3 million $ETH, worth around $13 billion.
Among the largest is SharpLink Gaming, which announced Tuesday that it added roughly $252 million in Ethereum to its reserves, buying 55,463 $ETH at an average price of $4,462. The purchase lifted its total holdings to 797,704 $ETH valued at $3.6 billion.
The company, which began life as a gambling marketing firm, has pivoted toward an Ethereum-focused treasury strategy and counts Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin as its board chair.
“Our regimented execution of SharpLink’s $ETH treasury strategy continues to demonstrate the strength of our vision,” said SharpLink co-CEO Joseph Shalom in a statement, adding that the company sees itself as both building long-term shareholder value and supporting the Ethereum ecosystem.
Earlier this week, a research note by Standard Chartered called Ethereum’s pullback a “great entry point,” and arguing that $ETH would hit $7,500 by the end of the year. The bank’s head of digital assets Geoffrey Kendrick pointed to Ethereum treasury companies and exchange-traded funds scooping up the available supply of $ETH, arguing that they are “just getting started.”
On prediction market Myriad (launched by Decrypt's parent company DASTAN), users are inclined to agree with Standard Chartered's bullish outlook, with almost 80% expecting $ETH to hit $5,000 in 2025.
Meanwhile, Ethereum’s fundamentals are showing strain, with an exit queue of over 1 million $ETH set to be withdrawn from staking, contributing to record transaction wait times and highlighting the chain’s persistent scaling challenges.
The turbulence comes as the broader crypto market steadies after a weekend sell-off triggered by a Bitcoin whale unloading $2.7 billion worth of BTC, which cascaded into forced liquidations and sharp price swings across major tokens.