Ethereum updated the record, bitcoin collapsed after the sale of the "whale". What to expect from the crypto?

Ethereum renewed its nearly four-year record and broke the $4900 mark for the first time. While Ethereum left all resistance levels behind, bitcoin lost all of its gains late last week due to an unexpected $2 billion sell-off by a major crypto-kit.

Ethereum rose above $4900 for the first time on the evening of August 24, shortly before updating the record of $4867 held since November 8, 2021, CoinDesk reports. The five-year chart of Ethereum-dollar shows a confident multi-year breakthrough: the second-capitalization cryptocurrency after a prolonged consolidation not only surpassed the maximum of 2021, but also left behind all levels of historical resistance, the publication states. This is what traders call price discovery (price discovery) - the market forms new highs, focusing only on the current behavior of market participants and not taking into account previous data, the article says.

Meanwhile, bitcoin lost all the gains made during the rally late last week and at one point fell to $110.78k, its lowest level since July 10, CNBC reported. On August 22, cryptocurrencies rose sharply along with the stock market after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell hinted at an upcoming rate cut, thereby raising investor interest in risky assets. However, on Sunday, August 24, the bitcoin exchange rate collapsed by more than 2% in 10 minutes. Cointelegraph attributes this collapse to the actions of an anonymous "cryptokit" who in a few days sold $2 billion worth of bitcoins that had been in his wallets for more than six years and bought Ethereum for almost the entire amount.

In the past few weeks, it is Ethereum, not bitcoin, that has been leading the crypto market thanks to a favorable regulatory backdrop, a boom in interest in stablecoins and massive purchases by corporate investors, CNBC highlights.

"There are finally more buyers [of Ethereum] than sellers," the channel quoted Ben Kurland, head of crypto research platform DYOR, as saying. - Exchange-traded investment funds on Ethereum are attracting steady inflows of funds, and public companies are starting to view Ethereum as a treasury asset that can be placed in staking (analogous to a deposit - Oninvest) for yield - it's a more sustainable form of demand than retail speculation."

"Bitcoin has run out of steam, while Ethereum has not," characterized the change of market leader by analyst Miles Deutscher. Deutscher's words point to the difference in the dynamics of the two largest cryptocurrencies: bitcoin's rally has stalled at recent highs, while Ethereum has entered a phase of searching for a new price, CoinDesk explains.

There won't be a bitcoin bear market for several more years thanks to growing investor interest in cryptocurrencies, US President Donald Trump's cryptocurrency adviser David Bailey told X on August 23. "Every government, bank, insurance company, corporation, pension fund and other [market participants] will own bitcoin. The process has already started, but we haven't even reached 0.01% of the target market (Total Addressable Market (TAM) yet. We will go much higher than that. Dream big," he added.

Bailey's statement is questionable as there are quite a few factors that could bring down bitcoin, crypto analysts interviewed by Cointelegraph warned. ZX Squared Capital co-founder and chief investment officer Xi Ken Zheng noted that cryptocurrencies are still highly correlated with the stock market. If it slows down and enters a bearish trend, "cryptocurrencies will follow," Zheng said. Such a scenario is unlikely in 2025, he said.

The market is now risk-oriented, which encourages capital flows into high momentum assets such as bitcoin and Ethereum, said Pav Khandal, lead market analyst at crypto broker Swyftx. He expects that at some point there will be a reverse flow of funds from cryptocurrencies into fixed-income instruments.

"For bitcoin, the path of least resistance is up, but that doesn't mean a bear market is coming in a few years. Macroeconomic shocks happen when you least expect them. I suspect we'll continue to see what we're seeing now - lower price volatility on every cycle," Handal said.

The last bitcoin bear market was seen in 2022 and before that in 2018. In both cases, it was preceded by a violent bullish trend. Ryan McMillin, co-founder and chief investment officer of cryptocurrency firm Merkle Tree Capital, believes that the current baseline scenario points to a bitcoin market peak around the second quarter of 2026. If global liquidity begins to decline after that, a "moderate bear market" is likely by mid-2026, he suggested.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor