Ethereum whales bought an additional $1 billion after a 15% drop — Where will the price go next?

Ethereum appears to be stabilizing after a sharp correction. ETH is currently trading around $2,950 after falling approximately 15.6% from its January 2024 peak before bouncing back from a key support zone. While Ethereum's price movement remains weak (down 11% over the past week), some fundamental signals suggest the situation may be changing.

Several positive factors, such as a reversal in the downward trend, aggressive buying by whales, and a surprising recovery in network activity, are converging. Taken together, these signals raise a crucial question: Is Ethereum preparing for a stronger recovery, or is this just a short-term bounce?

A downtrend occurs when volume diverges and whales get involved.

Ethereum's recent weakness is not accidental. From January 6th to January 14th, 2024, ETH showed a bearish divergence on the Relative Strength Index (RSI) on the daily chart. While the price of ETH rose to new highs, the RSI peaked lower, a signal that often indicates the upward momentum has weakened.

This signal was later confirmed. The price of Ethereum corrected downwards by approximately 15.6%, falling to the support zone of $2,860 before stabilizing.

The important thing is what happened in this support zone.

As prices continued their downward trend (from January 20th to January 21st, 2024), the On-Balance Volume (OBV) formed a higher Dip , indicating weakening selling pressure and buying from large investors absorbing supply instead of a sell-off. OBV represents Capital flow, and this type of divergence often appears near short-term Dip .

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The sharks appear to have reacted to this change.

Over the past 24 hours, the amount of Ethereum held by whales (excluding those on exchanges) has increased from 103.73 million ETH to 104.08 million ETH. This means that approximately 350,000 ETH were added in a single day.

At the current ETH price, this accumulated amount is worth over $1.03 billion.

This suggests that whales aren't buying at the peak, but rather buying aggressively when the market has corrected and prices have entered major support zones, XEM this as an opportunity to enter rather than exit. But this may not be the only reason.

Ethereum regains second place in terms of unique addresses per day, surpassing Sei.

The technical context isn't the only positive point.

As of January 23, 2024, Ethereum has regained its position as the second-largest number of unique active addresses per day in Layer-1 networks (after BNB), according to statistics from BeInCrypto experts. ETH has just surpassed Sei (also a Layer-1 platform), which Capital significant growth recently thanks to the gaming sector. opBNB (Layer-2 of BNB) continues to hold a higher position.

This point is crucial because the number of active addresses reflects actual usage on the network, not just price speculation. Ethereum regaining this position shows that on-chain activity on this layer-1 platform has recovered, even though the price is still below its recent peak. Sei has been a major competitor to Ethereum in recent times.

Moreover, ETH still outperforms major layer-2 ecosystems in terms of address growth rate.

This recovery trend is also spreading to conversations on social media.

Interest in Ethereum on social media platforms surged, rising from around 0.37% to 4.43% just yesterday, even peaking at nearly 5.8% before cooling down. Historically, such periods of significant ETH activity on social media have often preceded short-term price rallies. This was also the period when whales bought over $1 billion worth of ETH.

For example:

• On January 17, 2024, when ETH 's social media prominence surged, ETH price increased by 2.1% in subsequent sessions.
• On January 21, 2024, another sharp increase helped boost the price of ETH by 3.4% in just the next 24 hours.

This doesn't guarantee a continued sharp price increase, but it shows renewed attention on the network that previously supported short-term price hikes. ETH return to the number 2 spot in terms of daily unique addresses on L1 (at the time of writing) is also a fundamental reason for the increased interest.

Ethereum's current price levels are Vai .

From this perspective, Ethereum's price structure is quite clear.

On the downside, the $2,860 level remains a key support zone. This price point marked the end of the 15.6% correction and is also where whales are buying heavily. If the price breaks through this area, the uptrend will weaken and ETH could continue to fall to lower support levels.

On the upside, ETH needs to break above the $3,010 mark, only about 2.6% higher than the current price, to confirm short-term strength. If it holds above this level, the next target would be the $3,350 region – where ETH price surge has been halted since mid-January 2024.

If ETH breaks through this resistance zone, the price could head towards higher levels such as $3,490 and $3,870. Conversely, if it loses the $2,860 mark, ETH will likely retest support at $2,770, and the recovery scenario will no longer be valid.