The altcoin industry, led by Ethereum (ETH), followed the Bitcoin (BTC) price in a bullish rebound during the past 24 hours as the DeepSeek narrative got largely debunked. The total crypto market cap gained over 3 percent in the past 24 hours to hover about $3.67 trillion on Tuesday, January 28, during the mid-European trading session.
With the leveraged crypto market having cooled down in the past few days, Ethereum price led the wider altcoin industry in a relief rally. According to the latest market data, ETH price gained over 4 percent in the last 24 hours to trade at about $3,203 at the time of this writing.
Ethereum Whales Not Fully Convinced
The Ethereum network has experienced major ups and downs regarding the demand from whale investors. The approval of spot ETH ETFs in the United States played a significant role in the mainstream adoption of Ether.
After registering an impressive cash inflow in mid-December 2024, the US spot Ether ETFs have experienced lower demand in the recent past. Apart from BlackRock’s ETHA, which registered a net cash inflow of about $20.6 million, the rest of the US spot Ether ETFs registered either net cash outflow or zero flow on Monday.
Meanwhile, on-chain data analysis provided by Glassnode shows that 13 mega whales, each holding over 10,000 ETH, joined the network during the past 24 hours.
All Is Not Lost
The Ethereum core developers, led by co-founder Vitalik Buterin, have been working on major network updates to help retain the leading position of the DeFi ecosystem. Moreover, Ethereum’s DeFi space has the leading total value locked (TVL) of about $63 billion and a stablecoins market cap of over $116 billion in the layer one ecosystem.
Notably, Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade is a major focal point of this year’s major network upgrades. Furthermore, several changes will be effected for validators, such as Lido DAO (LDO), through increasing the base staked ETH units.
Midterm Expectations for ETH Price
According to a popular crypto analyst Benjamin Cowen, Ethereum’s price is likely to drop below $3k to retest the support level above $2,300 before kickstarting the next major bullish leg. Ahead of the first Federal Reserve Interest Rate decision for 2025, Cowen highlighted that the ETH/BTC pair is likely to bottom if Quantitative Easing (QE) begins.
However, the short-term bearish sentiment for Ether price could be invalidated if the altcoin successfully closes above the resistance range between $3,870 and $4k.
