ETH Profit-Taking Hits 3-Week High Despite 5.5% Price Drop

Ethereum’s network recorded its highest realized profits in three weeks on Thursday, with $74.58M booked in a single spike even as the asset’s price fell roughly 5.5% over the past three days.

The data, published by on-chain analytics firm Santiment, points to a specific group of sellers: traders who bought ETH when it was trading below $2,000 during February and March and are now cashing out while they still can.

Who’s Selling and Why It Makes Sense

Santiment’s analysis is worth sitting with for a moment, because the headline number looks strange at first. Prices are down, yet profit-taking is at a three-week high, but the explanation is straightforward once you know what to look for.

ETH spent much of February and March below the $2,000 mark, a period Santiment described as one of “war fears and notably uncertain times in crypto.” Traders who accumulated during that window are still sitting on gains even after this week’s decline, and many have decided to act on them.

Furthermore, separate analysis by CryptoQuant contributor Rei Researcher shows that deposit addresses on Binance spiked to roughly 9,000 ETH, the highest in over a year, with inflow bars confirming selling pressure concentrated around the $2,260 price zone.

The Santiment data also shows that four-hour candles have been compressing near $2,241, a sign of elevated distribution activity. More transactions across a network mean more realized profit-and-loss events, and when volume is elevated, those modest individual gains pile up quickly into large network-level totals.

Santiment’s guidance for traders is to “lean cautious” but stop short of turning outright bearish. The firm is watching for a spike in realized losses as a potential bottoming signal, and advises against aggressive positioning until the distribution phase shows clear signs of ending.

A Technically Fragile Picture

The selling activity is hitting Ethereum at a structurally vulnerable moment, as noted by analyst Keith Alan, who said that the cryptocurrency briefly broke above its macro trend line before being rejected at the 21-week simple moving average and has since slipped below a cluster of technical levels near $2,280.