ETH Retreats From $2,800

Ethereum (ETH) fell below $2,700 on Sep. 23 after an advance toward $2,800 lost momentum. The session low reached $2,648, marking the downside reference. ETH opened near $2,754, climbed to roughly $2,789 and then reversed sharply. By 15:07 UTC, the token was trading around $2,675, down 2.84% for the session.

The speed of the decline was evident on the four-hour chart. A single candle moved ETH from a high near $2,730 to approximately $2,648, taking the token below its 20-period moving average at $2,709.81. That average is the first level buyers would need to reclaim to repair the short-term structure. Longer-term averages remained below the spot price: the four-hour 50-, 100- and 200-period moving averages stood at $2,586.27, $2,540.49 and $2,499.93, respectively. The levels highlight the extent of Ethereum’s advance from roughly $2,400 in mid-September through the former $2,550 resistance zone.

Demand for spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds had been building before the reversal. Fund-flow trackers recorded $270 million in net inflows on Sep. 21 and an additional $162.2 million on Sep. 22, for a combined $432.2 million across the two sessions. Such flows are widely tracked as a gauge of institutional demand for the asset, and whether they continued through the pullback will become clear in the next flow report.

Leveraged positioning added potential downside pressure. A three-day liquidation heatmap showed clusters near $2,700, the level ETH had just lost, as well as around $2,650 and $2,630 below the market. These are areas where margin positions could face pressure if reached. Veteran trader Ted Pillows identified $2,550 as the largest liquidity cluster and said ETH could revisit that area before another advance. The zone is close to the four-hour 100-period moving average at $2,540.49 and the daily 0.786 retracement near $2,532.

Brandt Charts an $8,600 Path

Long-term market commentary remained focused on higher levels despite the pullback. Commodities trader Peter Brandt shared a Sep. 21 long-term chart of CME Ethereum futures, the US-regulated contract commonly used by institutional desks, and wrote that, once ETH clears the $5,000 threshold, it “will eventually ascend to $8,600.” The chart marked a higher objective at $8,674.50 and included a horizontal line around $5,000. Based on the $2,717.89 price quoted when Brandt posted the chart, a move to $5,000 would represent an advance of roughly 84%.

Brandt also distinguished between publishing market analysis and claiming to have executed trades. He cautioned that describing oneself as bullish or displaying a chart does not constitute evidence of trading activity, writing that “a post on X is not evidence” when someone claims to have filled an order.

Brandt’s background includes a commodities career that began in 1976, the founding of Factor Trading Co. in 1980 and a 1990 book on classical chart patterns in commodity futures. His Sep. 21 chart is available on X.

Accumulation provided additional context for the long-term outlook. Bitmine Immersion Technologies added 27,562 ETH in the week to Sep. 21, bringing its reported holdings to 5,983,940 ETH. The purchase represented the company’s 68th consecutive weekly buy and continued its Ethereum treasury strategy.

In a Sep. 21 SEC filing, Bitmine disclosed that 5,067,309 ETH, or approximately 85% of its holdings, had been committed to staking as of Sep. 20. The staked reserves are used with validators that secure the Ethereum network, placing most of the treasury’s ETH inside the chain’s proof-of-stake validation system.

$2,666 Support Under Composite Watch

Tom Lee, Fundstrat co-founder and BitMine chairman, offered another bullish long-term assessment in an interview. Lee said he expected Ethereum to reach a new all-time high this year and answered “absolutely” when asked whether that outcome was likely. He described $3,000 as a reasonable near-term waypoint before prices above $5,000 come into play.

Lee said ETH had consolidated within a broad range for roughly five years. He argued that institutional assessments of blockchain infrastructure, including Robinhood’s decision to use Ethereum, increasingly favor the network’s security, liquidity and long operating history. He also cited the tokenization of traditional finance and potential future micropayments between artificial intelligence agents as developments that could expand demand.

Lee outlined a multiyear scenario in which ETH reaches 10 to 12 times its previous peak of approximately $5,000, implying a price near $60,000. He stressed that this was not a 12-month target. Lee also noted that Ethereum’s move from $1,500 to $2,800 had attracted surprisingly little attention, which he said suggested some large players remained positioned against the advance.

Forecast markets reflected considerable skepticism about a September breakout. On Polymarket, where traders buy contracts that settle on verifiable real-world outcomes, participants assigned a 10% probability to ETH reaching $3,000 before the end of the month, a 19% probability of reaching $2,900 and roughly a 20% chance of trading above $2,800.

The pullback also coincided with a macroeconomic shock. Hotter-than-expected US PMI readings pushed the composite gauge from 56.0 to 58.4 and the manufacturing reading from 53.9 to 57.0. The 10-year Treasury yield rose above 5% for the first time since July 2007, before the global financial crisis, while Polymarket’s implied probability of an October rate hike increased by 14 percentage points intraday to 56%.

Coinglass data showed more than $104.55 million in ETH liquidations over the preceding 24 hours, with long positions accounting for 77% of the total. Open interest declined by approximately 3% alongside the price.

As of 08:43 UTC, COINOTAG’s proprietary -indicator composite support-and-resistance scoring engine rated the $2,820.16 resistance level at 79 out of 100, the strongest band on its board. The score reflected confluence among the Fibo 0.000 level, the Donchian Upper band, a Swing High and R2. Spot ETH was trading at $2,670.30, down 2.72% over 24 hours and below that resistance.

On the downside, the same engine rated $2,326.61 support at 68 out of 100, based on an LVN, Fibo 0.382, Flip R→S and Keltner Lower cluster. A nearer cushion at $2,617.07 received a score of 53 out of 100 based on an Ichimoku Tenkan, Ichimoku Kijun and S1 grouping.

Derivatives positioning remained constructive by the stated indicators. Funding stood at 0.0052%, a positive rate under which longs pay shorts to maintain positions; aggregate open interest was near $11.15 billion, and the long-to-short account ratio was 1.54, with 60.6% of accounts long. The Fear & Greed Index, a 0-to-100 sentiment gauge, stood at 71, classified as Greed, while the RSI was 61.99 and the MACD signal was bullish. These indicators pointed to a risk-on tilt across the broader altcoin market. A move back above $2,703.03 would reopen a test of $2,820.16, while a decline below $2,617.07 would shift attention toward $2,326.61 and weaken the short-term bullish thesis.