Ethereum (ETH) has surged above $2,500, now testing a critical supply level that could spark a massive rally for both ETH and altcoins. 

After several days of anxiety and uncertainty, yesterday’s market surge has reignited optimism across the crypto space. Investors and traders are closely watching Ethereum’s price action, as a break above this crucial zone could signal the start of a significant upward trend, potentially setting the stage for an Altseason.

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Top analysts and investors await confirmation that ETH is poised to rally soon. Carl Runefelt, a well-known analyst and investor, has shared his technical analysis on Ethereum, suggesting that the long-awaited rally may be just around the corner. 

According to Runefelt, ETH’s breakout from the current supply zone could lead to a substantial price surge, attracting bullish momentum for Ethereum and a broader range of altcoins. 

The next few days are critical for Ethereum’s price action as the market awaits signals that could define the direction of this potential rally. Investors remain optimistic, anticipating that ETH could lead the market into its next major bullish phase.

Ethereum Testing Crucial Supply

Ethereum has been trading within a bullish triangle formation since early August, and the moment of truth for a potential breakout may be close. 

ETH has underperformed BTC throughout the year, causing many investors and traders to question ETH’s strength during this cycle. This trend led to a shift in confidence as Bitcoin continued to dominate, leaving Ethereum behind. 

However, during yesterday’s market pump, Ethereum showed renewed strength, outperforming Bitcoin for the first time in a while, signaling a possible shift in market dynamics.

Prominent crypto analyst Carl Runefelt recently shared a technical analysis on X, highlighting Ethereum’s imminent breakout from the bullish triangle pattern. 

According to Runefelt, Ethereum is approaching a key moment, and a breakout from this pattern could lead to a major rally. He suggests that once ETH breaks through, the next supply zone to target is around $3,400, representing a significant upward move from current levels.

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This optimistic outlook comes from renewed positive sentiment across the market and Ethereum’s improved price action. Traders and investors are closely watching the next few days, as a successful breakout could mark the beginning of Ethereum’s long-awaited bullish trend and re-establish its strength relative to Bitcoin.

ETH Technical Levels To Watch

Ethereum is trading at $2,611 after a notable 7% surge yesterday. This upward momentum allowed the price to break past the $2,500 mark, a critical resistance level pushing the price down since the beginning of October.

Now, Ethereum is less than 8% away from the 200-day exponential moving average (EMA), currently at $2,806.

For bulls to gain control and establish a sustained uptrend, ETH must reclaim this 200-day EMA and close above the $2,800 level. Doing so would signal a continuation of bullish momentum and set the stage for a potential rally to higher price levels.

On the other hand, if Ethereum fails to hold above the $2,500 support level, a deeper correction may be on the horizon. In that case, the price could return to $2,300, where stronger demand may help stabilize the market.

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The next few days are crucial for Ethereum, as traders and investors are watching closely to see whether the price can hold its recent gains and break through key resistance levels.

Featured image from Dall-E, chart from TradingView

• CrossFi launched an EVM-compatible mainnet for scalable web3 payments.
• The network supports 10,000 TPS and bridges Ethereum assets seamlessly.
• Governance uses MPX tokens, with fees averaging $0.02 per transaction.

Cross Finance, commonly known as CrossFi, has announced the launch of its EVM-compatible mainnet, marking a significant step in the evolution of decentralized finance (DeFi) and web3 payment solutions.

The CrossFi blockchain aims to provide a scalable, decentralized ecosystem designed to support high-volume payments and everyday transactions, bridging traditional finance with the world of crypto.

The CrossFi mainnet’s launch comes on the heels of a successful testnet, conducted in collaboration with CoinList, which attracted over one million active wallets.

The CrossFi blockchain

The network’s infrastructure is built using the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint, enabling a modular design that supports up to 10,000 transactions per second (TPS).

This scalability makes CrossFi suitable for hosting payment applications that require high throughput, similar to Visa-level processing capabilities.

As an EVM-compatible network, CrossFi allows seamless integration with Ethereum-native assets, which can be bridged to its platform and utilized within its payment ecosystem.

Its security is reinforced by PCI DSS certification, a data protection standard recognized by major payment card companies, ensuring that the platform maintains industry-leading data transmission and storage practices.

The governance of the decentralized network is powered by the Mint Power (MPX) token, which is also used to facilitate transaction fees that average $0.02 per transaction.

In addition, the Cross Finance ecosystem features a variety of financial tools, including CrossFi App, which enables services like staking, lending, crypto-fiat exchange, and P2P payments. Users can also leverage CrossFi xAPP for token swaps, cross-chain asset bridging, and liquidity mining.

Further enhancing its ecosystem, CrossFi supports synthetic asset minting, over-collateralized stablecoins, and offers decentralized platforms for trading real-world assets.

By integrating multiple functionalities across its components, Cross Finance is set to democratize access to decentralized finance and facilitate the adoption of blockchain technology in global payments.

The network’s launch partners, including Alchemy and other validators, will play a key role in optimizing performance and maintaining decentralization.

With this mainnet launch, CrossFi is positioned to become a pivotal player in the evolving web3 financial landscape, empowering businesses and users to explore new possibilities in the digital payments space.

Zaheer Ebtikar, the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and founder of Split Capital—a hedge fund specializing in liquid token investments—has attributed the Ethereum underperformance over the last months to strategic missteps by the Ethereum Foundation and structural shifts in crypto capital flows. In an analysis shared via X (formerly Twitter), Ebtikar writes, “Independent of the myriad of (probable) bad decisions that the ETH foundation & co have made there’s another structural reason why ETH has traded like a dog this cycle.”

Why Is The Ethereum Price Lagging Behind?

Ebtikar began by emphasizing the importance of understanding capital flows within the crypto market. He identified three primary sources of capital flow: retail investors who engage directly through platforms like Coinbase, Binance, and Bybit; private capital from liquid and venture funds; and institutional investors who invest directly through Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) and futures. However, he noted that retail investors are “hardest to quantify” and are “not fully present in the market today,” thus excluding them from his analysis.

Focusing on private capital, Ebtikar highlighted that in 2021, this segment was the largest capital base, driven by crypto euphoria that attracted more than $20 billion in net new inflows. “Fast forward to today, private capital is no longer the heavy hitter capital base as ETFs and other traditional vehicles have taken the role of the largest net new buyer of crypto,” he stated. He attributed this decline to a series of poor venture investments and overhang from prior cycles, which have “left a bad taste in the mouths of LPs.”

These venture firms and liquid funds recognized that they couldn’t wait out another cycle and needed to be more proactive. They began taking more “shots on target” for liquid plays, often through private deals involving locked tokens such as Solana (SOL), Celestia (TIA), and Toncoin (TON). “These locked deals also represented something more interesting for a lot of firms—there’s a world outside of Ethereum-based investing that is actually growing and usable and has enough market cap growth relative to ETH that could justify the underwriting of the investment,” Ebtikar explained.

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He noted that investors were aware it would be increasingly difficult to raise funds for venture and liquid investments. Without the return of retail capital, institutional products became the only viable avenue for a bid for ETH. Mindshare began fragmenting as the three-year mark of the 2021 vintage approached, and products like BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) gained legitimacy as the de facto benchmark for crypto. Private capital had to make a choice: “Abandon their core portfolio hold in ETH and move down the risk curve or hold your breath for traditional players to start bailing you out.”

This led to the formation of two camps. The first consisted of pre-ETF ETH sellers between January and May 2024, who opted out of ETH and swapped to assets like SOL. The second group, post-ETF ETH sellers from June to September 2024, realized that ETF flows into ETH were lackluster and that it would take much more for ETH’s price to gain support. “They understood that the ETF flows were lackluster and it would take a lot more for ETH price to begin being supportive,” Ebtikar noted.

Turning his attention to institutional capital, Ebtikar observed that when spot Bitcoin ETFs like IBIT, FBTC, ARKB, and BITW entered the market, they exceeded expectations. “These products broke any realistic target investors and experts could’ve fathomed with their success,” he stated. He emphasized that Bitcoin ETFs have become some of the most successful ETF products in history. “BTC went from being a dog in the average portfolio to now the only funnel for net new capital in crypto and at a record rate too,” he said.

Despite Bitcoin’s surge, the rest of the market didn’t keep up. Ebtikar questioned why this was the case, pointing out that crypto-native investors, retail, and private capital had long since reduced their Bitcoin holdings. Instead, they were “stuck in altcoins and Ethereum as the core of their portfolio.” Consequently, when Bitcoin received its institutional bid, few in the crypto space benefited from the new wealth effect. “Few in crypto were beneficiaries of the newly made wealth effect,” he remarked.

Investors began to reassess their portfolios, struggling to decide their next moves. Historically, crypto capital would cycle from index assets like Bitcoin to Ethereum and then down the risk curve to altcoins. However, traders speculated on potential flows into Ethereum and similar assets but were “broadly wrong.” The market started to diverge, and the dispersion between asset returns intensified. Professional crypto investors and traders moved aggressively down the risk curve, and funds followed suit to generate returns.

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The asset they chose to reduce exposure to was Ethereum—the largest asset in their core portfolios. “Slowly but surely ETH started losing steam to SOL and similar, and a non-trivial percentage of this flow started really moving downstream to memecoins,” Ebtikar observed. “ETH lost its moat in crypto-savvy investors, the only group of investors who were historically interested in buying.”

Even with the introduction of spot ETH ETFs, institutional capital paid little attention to Ethereum. Ebtikar described Ethereum’s predicament as suffering from “middle-child syndrome.” He elaborated, “The asset is not in vogue with institutional investors, the asset lost favor in crypto private capital circles, and retail is nowhere to be seen bidding anything at this size.” He emphasized that Ethereum is too large for native capital to support while other index assets like SOL and large caps like TIA, TAO, and SUI are capturing investor attention.

According to Ebtikar, the only way forward is to expand the universe of potentially interested investors, which can only happen at the institutional level. “ETH’s best odds of making a material comeback (short of changes to the core protocol’s trajectory) is to have institutional investors pick up the asset in the coming months,” he suggested. He acknowledged that while Ethereum faces significant challenges, it is “the only other asset with an ETF and likely will be for some time.” This unique position offers a potential avenue for recovery.

Ebtikar mentioned several factors that could influence Ethereum’s future trajectory. He cited the possibility of a Trump presidency, which could bring changes to regulatory frameworks affecting cryptocurrency. He also pointed to potential shifts in the Ethereum Foundation’s direction and core focus, suggesting that strategic changes could reinvigorate investor interest. Additionally, he highlighted the importance of marketing the ETH ETF by traditional asset managers to attract institutional capital.

“Considering the possibility of a Trump Presidency, change at the Ethereum Foundation’s direction and core focus, and marketing of the ETH ETF by traditional asset managers, there are quite a few outs for the father of smart contracting platforms,” Ebtikar remarked. He expressed cautious optimism, stating that not all hope is lost for Ethereum.

Looking ahead to 2025, Ebtikar believes it will be a critical year for cryptocurrency and especially for Ethereum. “2025 will very much be an interesting year for crypto and especially for Ethereum as so much of the damage from 2024 can be unwound or further deepened,” he concluded. “Time will tell.”

At press time, ETH traded at $2,534.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com