Points of Focus

• ETH trades at $1,915.21, down 0.68%, while holding above its entire 10- to 50-day MA stack.
• Binance perpetual futures volume runs roughly 14-to-1 above spot volume for ETH.
• The imbalance’s 30-day Z-score has declined, but the underlying gap remains wide.

Ether (ETH) traded at $1,915.21 on the daily chart, down 0.68% on the day, according to TradingView data. The candle opened at $1,928.40, reached a high of $1,942.60, and fell to a low of $1,911.84.

A market still running on leverage

A CryptoQuant Quicktake shows Binance perpetual futures volume for ETH at 1.46 million ETH against just 102,840 ETH in spot volume, with a volume imbalance index reading of 0.868. The 30-day Z-Score for that imbalance has declined to -0.46.

That decline is worth stating in full rather than reading as good news on its own. A Z-score measures today’s reading against its own recent average, not against some neutral baseline. Falling from levels above 2 toward negative territory means today’s gap is smaller than it has been over the past month, nothing more.

ETH Perp-Spot Volume Gap on Binance Remains Elevated Despite Z-Score Decline

“This suggests that much of the recent price movement may be driven by leveraged positions rather than sustained buying from long-term investors.” – By @ArabxChain pic.twitter.com/ZvBSg1jjFo

— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) July 21, 2026

It says nothing about whether spot demand has improved in absolute terms, and the raw figures confirm it hasn’t: 1.46 million ETH in perpetual volume against 102,840 ETH in spot is still a ratio of about 14:1. A reading of the falling Z-score alone, without that ratio, would appear more bullish than the underlying data support.

An accompanying CryptoQuant chart shows this is not a new development. Perpetual volume (shown as green bars) has consistently run far above spot volume (barely visible red bars) from March through July, spanning both ETH’s decline toward $1,500 in June and its recovery toward $1,900 since then.

The Z-score itself has fallen from readings above 2 in March and April toward negative territory by July, even as the volume imbalance line stayed elevated throughout. The structure of ETH’s trading, not just its price, has stayed the same all year.

What this complicates

ETH holding near $1,900 while spot volume stays this thin means the market’s actual buy-and-sell activity is still running almost entirely through leveraged derivatives rather than direct spot purchases. That distinction matters mechanically: Leverage-driven moves unwind differently than spot-driven ones; they are vulnerable to liquidation cascades in either direction rather than gradual profit-taking.

CoinGlass data shows ETH accounted for $33.21 million of the $196.70 million in total crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours, within a broader market where shorts were liquidated at roughly twice the rate of longs, $128.08 million versus $68.62 million.

A market this leverage-heavy, with short positions already absorbing the bulk of forced liquidations, is exactly the kind of setup where continued price strength could keep squeezing leveraged shorts rather than reflecting organic demand pulling price higher on its own, a specific, testable mechanism rather than a vague volatility warning.

This also reframes how to read the other bullish threads from this week. Whale wallets staking ETH withdrawn from Binance and a fully bullish short-term MA stack are both real, verifiable developments, but neither speaks to who is actually trading ETH day-to-day on the exchange where the bulk of derivatives activity concentrates.

A market can show constructive onchain accumulation and a favorable technical setup while its active trading volume remains dominated by short-term leveraged bets, and treating all three signals as equally confirming would blend data points that answer different questions.

Technical levels to watch

The daily ETH/USD chart and technical data from TradingView show ETH above every moving average (MA) from the 10-day to the 50-day.

The 10-day exponential moving average (EMA) at $1,873.19, 20-day EMA at $1,829.67, 30-day EMA at $1,811.52, and 50-day EMA at $1,825.50 all show an upward signal, as do their simple moving average (SMA) counterparts. 

The Hull MA at $1,920.55 shows a downward signal, sitting just above the current price. Only the 100-day and 200-day tiers remain bearish, with the 100-day EMA at $1,936.35 and the 200-day EMA at $2,194.48.

• The relative strength index (RSI) reads 62.57, above the neutral 50 line.
• The average directional index (ADX) reads 24.35, indicating a weak-to-moderate trend.
• The moving average convergence/divergence (MACD) at 47.04 shows a positive signal.
• In contrast, the Commodity Channel Index at 126.08 and the Williams Percent Range at -14.87 both signal a downward trend, consistent with today’s pullback from the session high.

Immediate resistance sits at the day’s high of $1,942.60, close to the $1,950-$1,970 short liquidation cluster, followed by the 100-day EMA at $1,936.35. Support sits at the day’s low of $1,911.84, with the Hull MA at $1,920.55 and the 10-day EMA at $1,873.19, the next levels below.

A daily close above $1,942.60 would put the liquidation cluster in play, while a close below $1,911.84 would suggest today’s pullback is extending.

What comes next

The perp-spot imbalance and the MA breakout are describing two different things that both need to be true for a durable move: The technical structure has shifted bullish in a real sense, but the volume composition behind it has not.

Whether the Z-score’s decline continues while price holds near $1,900, easing the imbalance further, or whether perpetual volume reaccelerates on any push toward the $1,950-$1,970 cluster, is the specific test that would clarify whether this rally is broadening beyond leveraged positioning or still depends on it.