Ethereum holders have withdrawn 1.4 million ETH from exchanges since early June, according to Santiment data, even as the token climbed toward multi-week highs.

Santiment said exchange-held ETH fell nearly 18% between June 3 and August 27, dropping from about 7.69 million coins to roughly 6.28 million. The data show that another 275,000 ETH left exchanges after August 19, which marked the lowest exchange balance point in the twelve-week period.

Bitcoin moved in the opposite direction over the same stretch. BTC balances on exchanges rose by about 0.25%, leaving them near recent highs.

The divergence suggests that traders are positioning differently across the two largest cryptocurrencies, with ETH exchange outflows continuing even as the asset advanced and BTC exchange balances edging higher. For market watchers, exchange balances are often tracked because they can reflect how much supply is sitting on trading venues versus being held elsewhere.

ETH price has risen about 27% since August 16, Santiment noted. The withdrawals did not slow during that rally.

According to CoinGecko, ETH was trading at $2,523.03 at the time of writing, up 3.17% over the previous 24 hours. Trading volume reached $15.89 billion, and ETH was up 8.50% over the past week.

A trader known as Axel Bitblaze pointed to a technical setup on the weekly chart. He said a weekly close above $2,550 would confirm a structure similar to last year’s formation. In that earlier setup, ETH bottomed near $1,500, built a base below $2,000, and then produced a large weekly candle that pushed price into a major moving-average cluster.

After reclaiming that zone, ETH consolidated for several weeks before rallying toward $4,800, according to Bitblaze’s reading of the chart.

Market commentator Ignas offered a different perspective on what could drive ETH higher. He argued that Ethereum needs to connect its institutional adoption narrative with the ETH asset itself if it is to “really BOOM.”

In a post on X, Ignas said the dominant narrative is now the commoditization of infrastructure, with blockspace and data availability becoming more abundant and cheaper. As a result, adoption can grow without a corresponding increase in ETH burn, he said, while gas costs are increasingly abstracted away from users.

Ignas suggested that institutional staking may prove a stronger catalyst. He argued that large asset issuers may prefer securing their own transactions rather than relying on liquid staking providers. He also said native issuance of real-world assets on Ethereum could tie demand for ETH to the value it secures rather than to transaction fees.

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