Ethereum Drops Below $2,800 As Crypto Liquidations near $1B – Should Investors Worry?

[Ben Graham]

Ethereum (ETH) has retested its crucial $2,800 support level for the second time this week, as the broader crypto market erases all its intraweek gains. Some market observers have weighed in on whether investors should worry about King of Altcoin’s performance.

Ethereum Plunges Amid Broader Market Crash

On Thursday, global markets experienced a sharp decline, with stocks, cryptocurrencies, and even precious metals erasing over $3 trillion in market value in just a few hours.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, followed the market-wide correction, retracing 6.9% in the daily timeframe. The cryptocurrency has been hovering between $2,800 and $3,300 since the start of the year and attempted to reclaim the upper zone of this range this month.

Nonetheless, the recent geopolitical tensions and macroeconomic uncertainty have weakened the appetite for risk assets and halted the crypto market’s early January momentum.

According to Binance market data, Ethereum fell below $2,800 on Thursday morning, briefly bouncing before reaching a one-month low of $2,773. Meanwhile, the leading cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Bitcoin (BTC), saw a sharp 6.2% decline, reaching a two-month low of $83,934.

Data from CoinGlass shows that crypto liquidations over the past 24 hours surged to nearly $1 billion, with $917.17 million in leveraged positions forcibly closed at the time of writing. During this period, 223,915 traders were liquidated, and the largest single liquidation order happened on Hyperliquid, valued at $31.64 million.

Notably, more than half of the liquidations occurred in the past four hours, wiping out over $620 million since the morning. Around $422 million came from Bitcoin positions, while $160 million came from Ethereum positions.

ETH Price In ‘Endless Range’

Amid the market correction, some analysts shared their perspective on ETH’s price action. Sjuul from AltCryptoGems highlighted Ethereum’s price range in the daily chart, where the altcoin has hovered over the past two months.

According to the analyst, there isn’t a clear trend as Ethereum continues to trade within its “seemingly endless range” between $2,600 and $3,350. He suggested that investors should wait for a proper breakout above the upper boundary or a breakdown from the range lows before celebrating or worrying.

Similarly, trader EliZ affirmed that ETH’s macro perspective doesn’t show either real strength or weakness, but “an enormous, forced equilibrium” on the longer timeframes.

He pointed out that ETH “continues to move within well-defined boxes, above and below the same levels for months/years, without ever building a directionality that can be described as structural.”

Based on this, the trader asserted that without a successful move and confirmation from its key range, short-term efforts don’t signal a “change of regime. Only liquidity rotation.”

“We are not in a bullish phase, nor are we in a bearish phase. We are in a macro stalemate, where the market decides not to decide. Until we see a clean and sustained breakout of the indicated boxes …or a net loss of the same …any strong narrative is just storytelling,” he concluded.

As of this writing, Ethereum is trading at $2,798, a 5.3% decline on the weekly timeframe.