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Ether (ETH) traded at $2,410.34 on Friday, up 3.64% after opening at $2,325.60 and printing an intraday high of $2,447.08. The move is not just another green candle.
It pushed price above every rung of the moving average stack, from the 10-day exponential moving average (EMA) at $2,095.28 out to the 200-day simple moving average (SMA) at $2,004.00, a level ETH has struggled to hold through most of the past several months.
The ETH price now sits $406.34, or 20.3%, above the 200-day SMA and $315.06, or 15%, above the 10-day EMA, a wide spread that reflects how far ETH had fallen before this bounce rather than a sudden spike.
The tightest level underneath price is the Hull Moving Average (9) at $2,364.13, just $46.21, or 1.95%, below spot. That is the first level to watch: a slip back under it would be the earliest technical sign that today’s strength is fading, well before any slower-moving averages come into play.
MACD confirms the trend at 93.20, and momentum (10) reads 529.43, both aligned with the move rather than lagging it. This is not a market drifting into resistance. It broke a multi-month range on volume, with ETH’s whale distribution now sitting underneath a chart that has otherwise turned decisively bullish.
The fundamental leg behind the move is demand from spot ETH ETFs, which posted their fourth straight day of accelerating net inflows: $30.85 million on August 17, $71.47 million on August 18, $189.15 million on August 19, and $220.77 million on August 20, according to SoSoValue data.
That August 20 figure is the strongest single day across the entire window shown, more than seven times the prior week’s daily pace. Cumulative net inflow now stands at $11.97 billion, with total net assets at $13.58 billion, up from a flat $0.00 day as recently as August 14 and outright outflows on August 10 and 11.
That reversal matters because it lands in the same stretch Strategy’s cost basis and the broader short squeeze have pulled the rest of the market higher. ETH’s ETF demand is not happening in isolation.
It is compounding a market-wide liquidity move that also lifted BTC, and the two forces together explain why ETH’s gain today outpaces a simple correlation trade.
Not every indicator agrees with the breakout.
The Relative Strength Index (RSI) reads 86.41 and the Commodity Channel Index (CCI) sits at 295.99, both deep in territory that has historically preceded a pullback, with TradingView tagging the CCI reading an explicit sell signal even as the moving averages universally point higher. Stochastic RSI is pinned at 100.00, leaving no room for further upside momentum on that measure alone.
The largest ETH wallets have been shrinking for three months.
🐋 Wallets holding more than 1,000 ETH shed roughly 1.7M coins between May 20 and Aug 20, about 2.9% of that tier.
📈 The 1 to 10 ETH tier gained share over the same window, from 4.38% to 4.52% of supply, rising on 65… pic.twitter.com/Ml4TnS0L3x— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) August 20, 2026
That tension sharpens against large wallets that have been distributing into strength rather than joining the rally. ETF buyers and on-chain sellers are working against each other in the same window, and today’s price action suggests the ETF side is currently winning that fight. Whether it keeps winning is the open question, not whether the trend has turned.
The $2,364.13 Hull MA is the first real test. Lose it, and the overbought readings start to look prescient. A weekend hold shifts the real test down to the 200-day reclaim at $2,004.00, the level that would need to break first.
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