Ether fell below the $2,000 threshold on Friday after a wallet that on-chain analysts tie to the Ethereum Foundation sold another 2,000 ETH, a move that landed alongside a far larger exodus from U.S. spot ether funds.
The address, which begins with 0x5CBC, exchanged the tokens for roughly $3.87 million in the USDS stablecoin through the CoW Swap venue, according to blockchain tracker Lookonchain. The sale came in two tranches of 1,000 ETH each. Ether traded near $1,937 in the evening, down about 4% over 24 hours, after touching a session low of roughly $1,890 to $1,905 depending on the exchange. The token has shed about 13% over seven days.
It was the fourth disposal from the wallet since Oct. 12, per Lookonchain, and brought November's total to 4,000 ETH, worth about $8.03 million. The address sold 2,785 ETH for roughly $6.42 million on Oct. 26, then went quiet for two weeks before offloading 1,000 ETH on Nov. 10 and another 1,000 ETH the next day for about $2.03 million. Since Oct. 26, the tracked total is 6,785 ETH for about $14.45 million. Estimates of what remains in the wallet vary widely, from about 11,000 ETH to 21,247 ETH, depending on which sub-addresses analytics services include.
The foundation, a Swiss nonprofit that bankrolls Ethereum research, developers and grant programs, has not confirmed that the address belongs to it; the link is an attribution by Lookonchain that several crypto publications have repeated. The organization covers much of its spending by selling ether and converting the proceeds into fiat, so periodic sales are part of its normal budgeting rather than a market call.
The scale of the foundation's selling is small next to the fund flows. U.S. spot ether ETFs lost a net $695.9 million in November through Nov. 11, according to SoSoValue, roughly 87 times the $8.03 million the wallet raised this month. Seven of eight trading sessions in that stretch ended in outflows, with only Nov. 4 posting a gain, of $53 million. Assets under management across the funds shrank to $11.65 billion from $13.22 billion between Oct. 30 and Nov. 11.
On Nov. 11 alone, $144.8 million left the funds, including $129.8 million from BlackRock's ETHA, according to Farside Investors. Figures for Nov. 12 diverge: SoSoValue reported a net outflow of $70.57 million, the sixth consecutive day of redemptions, while Farside's preliminary tally showed about $8 million. Small inflows appeared at 21Shares, with $1.21 million, and at Invesco, with $0.40 million. Adding the Nov. 12 figure lifts the month's outflow to about $766 million, or roughly 95 times the foundation-linked sales.
Note: Figures are as reported by Lookonchain, SoSoValue, Farside Investors and CoinGlass; ether prices vary slightly by exchange.
The arithmetic helps explain why a $3.87 million sale cannot by itself move a market. About $14.8 billion of ether changed hands in 24 hours on Friday, according to CoinGecko, putting the foundation-linked sale at roughly 0.03% of daily volume. Lookonchain nonetheless pointed to a pattern: ether fell 9% after the Oct. 12 sale, 7.7% after Oct. 26 and 10.4% after Nov. 10. Those are correlations in time, not proof of cause, and the broader market declined in each instance while ETF redemptions were running in parallel.
The signal matters more than the size for many traders, who read sales by the organization closest to Ethereum as a sign of diminished confidence in higher prices. For the foundation, the swap is a budget line: salaries and grants are paid in fiat, not ether.
Leverage amplified Friday's move. CoinGlass counted about $288 million in ether futures liquidations within 24 hours, of which roughly $259 million were long positions, or almost 90% of the total. Forced closures occur when a leveraged position's losses outrun its posted collateral, prompting the exchange to shut it and sell additional tokens into a falling market.
Other large holders moved in both directions. Onchain Lens reported that one whale pulled about 8,876 ETH out of the Aave lending protocol and swapped 16,700 ETH for $30.94 million in USDT through CoW Swap, a trade valued at about $32.55 million before the swap, implying a hit of roughly $1.61 million. The same address had bought 8,631 ETH at an average of $2,743 about a month earlier. A separate wallet funded through Tornado Cash sold 1,499.5 ETH at an average of about $1,998.
On the buy side, an address beginning 0x4cee added 10,380 ETH for about $19.91 million, bringing its holdings to 25,498 ETH at an average cost of $2,382. At Friday's price that position carries an unrealized loss of roughly $11.3 million. The address had earlier booked a gain of about $3.66 million trading 10,500 ETH two months ago. The session thus showed both capitulation by October buyers and fresh accumulation by wallets that had waited for lower prices.
Technically, $2,000 had served as support since August and now acts as resistance, since buyers who entered there are inclined to sell at break-even. A close above Friday's high of about $2,020 would mark the break as a false signal. On the downside, the first level is Friday's low of $1,890 to $1,905, followed by $1,875, the lower edge of the decision zone identified a day earlier and untested since. Below that, the next round-number zone sits at $1,800.
The path over the coming days hinges more on fund flows than on the foundation's wallet. Six straight sessions of ETF redemptions show no sign of abating, and October buyers sitting on losses near $2,000 could add selling pressure on any rebound. Offsetting that, large-address buying such as the 0x4cee purchases points to demand at lower levels. The result argues for a sideways stretch between $1,875 and $2,020 until the ETF data turns.
The macro backdrop has also shifted. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 0.4% rise in U.S. consumer prices for October in data released Nov. 10, with core prices up 0.3%, keeping inflation and Federal Reserve rate expectations in focus. Bitcoin traded below $69,000 as the broader crypto market declined.
