Ethereum (ETH) fell to $2,241 on May 13, completing a 5.5% three-day decline from the $2,400 level that had capped every April advance, as per data from CoinGecko.
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On the same day, Santiment recorded $74.58M in ETH network realized profits, the highest reading in three weeks, as wallets that accumulated below $2,000 during February and March sold into what remains, for them, a profitable exit.
🤑 Ethereum just registered its highest network realized profits in 3 weeks. This may seem counterintuitive to see a spike of $74.58M in realized profits while $ETH’s price has dropped ~5.5% over the past 3 days. But here’s why:
📌 Holders with a much lower cost basis are… pic.twitter.com/YX6N6InkUX
— Santiment Intelligence (@SantimentData) May 14, 2026
The $74.58 million realized profit spike coincided with ETH’s 5.5% decline because most sellers were still deeply profitable. ETH traded below $2,000 throughout much of February and March, giving many wallets cost bases 12% to 25% beneath current prices.
Santiment’s 4-hour chart showed compression near $2,241 alongside elevated transaction volume and rising realized profits. The firm advised caution rather than outright bearishness, noting that deeper realized losses would likely signal a stronger market bottom.
The TradingView daily chart and technical data traces ETH’s full cycle: the token peaked near $4,800 in August 2025, declined through December, bottomed near $1,750 in February 2026, and recovered to $2,400 by late April. The current pullback from $2,400 to $2,241 is the first sustained rejection since the recovery began, with price now sitting on the dotted horizontal support zone at $2,200-$2,250.
The indicator panel from TradingView shows how far the technical picture has shifted over the past two weeks. On May 4, ETH sat above the EMA10 and SMA100, with a strong buy MA stack. As of May 13, ETH trades below EMA10 ($2,299), SMA10 ($2,313), EMA20 ($2,302), SMA20 ($2,310), EMA30 ($2,292), SMA30 ($2,320), EMA50 ($2,273), EMA100 ($2,338), and Hull MA ($2,263), all registering sell signals. SMA50 ($2,246.83) and SMA100 ($2,144.67) remain buy signals because the price sits above them. EMA200 ($2,575) and SMA200 ($2,629) stayed sell throughout.
RSI at 45.28 has slipped below the neutral 50 level without entering oversold territory, while Stochastic %K at 17.41 nears levels where ETH has historically seen short-term mean reversion. Momentum at -90.53 and MACD at 4.95 continue to reflect near-term selling pressure.
However, ADX remains at 20.06, below the 25 threshold typically associated with stronger directional trends, suggesting the current move still lacks full trend-breakdown momentum.
For bulls, reclaiming $2,300 is the first step toward neutralizing the short-term moving average structure. A daily close below $2,237.90, the May 13 low, would likely invalidate current support and open the door toward $2,157.
Spot ETH ETFs posted $33 million in outflows on May 9 and $28 million on May 12, the first two-day outflow run since the April 22-24 streak ended, as per data from SoSoValue. Both days preceded the Santiment distribution signal, suggesting institutional buyers pulled back ahead of the selling event rather than in response to it. Cumulative net inflows remain at $11.94 billion, and the structural demand base from BlackRock’s ETHB staked product has not reversed.
The staking picture on Beaconcha.in shows the supply mechanic that continues to work against any sustained breakdown. Over 3 million ETH sat in the staking entry queue, compared with 322,000 in the exit queue, for a 9:1 entry-to-exit ratio that removes supply from circulation daily.
Bitmine (NYSE: BMNR) held 5.18 million ETH as of May 3, with 4.36 million staked at 2.91% yield, generating $352 million in annualized staking revenue. Total ETH staked across all validators stands at approximately 37.85 million tokens, around 29-30% of the circulating supply.
The ETH price fell 5.5% during the most concentrated week of institutional ETH deployments in 2026.
None of those deployments reversed the price decline. Institutional product launches and near-term price action routinely decouple, particularly when short-term technical conditions and on-chain distribution dynamics dominate sentiment.
Santiment’s framework identifies the next actionable signal: a shift from the current $74.58M realized profit peak toward net realized losses across the network. That shift would indicate the February-March accumulator cohort has finished distributing, removing the dominant sell-side pressure of the past three days.
Etherealize’s Vivek Raman set a 2026 ETH price target of $15,000, arguing that tokenized assets will grow fivefold to $100 billion, stablecoins fivefold to $1.5 trillion, and ETH’s value will increase proportionally as the primary settlement layer for both. In April 2026, Etherealize published a follow-up research note setting a long-term target of $250,000, arguing that ETH is ‘better money than Bitcoin’ because it compounds via staking while remaining a pure bearer asset.
Ethereum in 2026: The Best Place to Do Business
– Stablecoins now have a regulatory framework
– Institutional tokenization on Ethereum is surging
– ETH has emerged as a corporate treasury assetEthereum is primed to realize its full potential in 2026
Predictions below:
(1/3)
— Etherealize (@Etherealize_io) January 5, 2026
However, all near-term targets assume Glamsterdam deployment in H1 2026. Developers are locked in the 200 million gas limit upgrade at the Soldøgn interoperability event, with no mainnet activation date confirmed as of May 14, 2026.
The Glamsterdam upgrade, targeting parallel transaction execution and enshrined proposer-builder separation, is the protocol catalyst that could shift the conversation from accumulation to breakout if delivered on schedule.
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