The price of Ethereum (ETH) fell below $1,600 on Friday, as risk aversion continued in the cryptocurrency market. The leading altcoin dropped 6.7% over the week, bringing its losses over the past thirty days to 23.5%.

Despite persistent negative sentiment across the market, sell-side positions in Ethereum derivatives have declined over the past three weeks, following the sharp drop in Ethereum’s price from more than $2,000 to nearly $1,560 at the time of writing.

This shift is reflected in the net trading volume on the Ethereum network, which has gradually moved out of the negative territory over the period mentioned above. This indicator measures the difference in trading volume between buyers and sellers in perpetual futures contracts using market orders.

The recent contraction suggests that selling pressure from traders on the price decline has eased after most of their positions became profitable following the drop.

Ethereum net trading volume. Source: CryptoQuant

Ethereum futures contracts also appear to have undergone a partial reset after the estimated leverage ratio (ELR) fell from 1.11 to 0.85 over the past three weeks. The estimated leverage ratio indicates the amount of leverage used in the cryptocurrency by comparing open interest to trading reserves.

The sharp decline in ETH’s ELR shows that a large number of leveraged positions have been wiped out, which could stabilize the market and reduce leverage risks.

Ethereum estimated leverage ratio. Source: CryptoQuant

While leverage fell alongside the shrinking of bearish positions, Ethereum derivatives still lean slightly to the downside, as funding rates continue to show negative readings—especially after further price drops over the past few days.

Meanwhile, institutional demand remained weak after six consecutive days of net outflows from U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs, according to SoSoValue data. These products are moving toward recording seven consecutive weeks of outflows, which would be their largest weekly decline since January.

The realized price low is one of the most important levels that investors watch, as it served as an indicator of a market bottom in the previous two bear market cycles. This metric suggests that Ethereum’s price could drop by nearly 30% before stabilizing at this level.
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