Author:Mr. Bai
As of February 2026, the crypto market appears to have entered a winter. ETH has dropped below $1,900, marking one of its worst starts to a year on record, down more than 60% from its 2025 high.
Market sentiment is in extreme panic, even causing insiders to sell their coins, further intensifying the pressure.
First, let's look at the technical side.
This is also something I’ve repeatedly emphasized in the community: on the K-line, we experienced a sharp decline, followed by consolidation, and the recent drop perfectly matches the expected final decline!
All I can do is encourage everyone to hold on and even enter the perfect dollar-cost averaging range—refer to the 2022 price movement; this is the final drop!
Second, let's look at the macro picture.
Ethereum's daily active addresses in February remained between 550,000 and 700,000+ (mainnet), having approached or exceeded 1 million+ during January-February. The 7-day and 30-day moving averages are still rising, indicating growing real user activity and DApp engagement.
On February 7, daily trading volume reached a historic high of 2.896M, and remained above 1.7M on February 22. Overall activity in early 2026 saw a significant increase compared to the same period in 2025, driven primarily by stablecoins and L2 activity.
The total supply of Ethereum-based stablecoins is approximately $158–183 billion (over 50% of the global total), and is expected to continue rising and reach new highs through 2025–2026, indicatingstablecoin growth is ongoing!
Exchange ETH reserves continue to decline, with total exchange ETH reserves falling to 16.2M ETH (the lowest since 2016), with sustained net outflows expected into early 2026.
Thus, combined with staking lockups, the effective circulating supply has significantly tightened (over 45% of ETH is now illiquid); despite short-term price pressure on ETH, the network’s fundamentals are on the verge of a breakout as of February 2026.
Three: Institutions are buying, not selling.
Retail investors are panicking, while institutions are positioning themselves. ETF fund inflows have resumed, and corporate treasuries are acquiring ETH at lower levels. Traditional financial institutions continue to tokenize assets on Ethereum.
The overall net outflow for January was $253 million, but on February 17, there was a single-day net inflow of $48.63 million (BlackRock ETHA led the day with a +$22.89 million inflow), and on February 13, it had also turned positive at +$10.26 million.
Although there has been recent volatility, there have been multiple instances of net inflows and zero outflows, with total AUM still exceeding $11.5 billion, indicating that institutions are beginning to rebalance around $1,900.
Four: 2026 Roadmap Focus
Upgrade directions include:
Increase Gas Limit
Enhance L2 interoperability
Expand zero-knowledge infrastructure
Account Abstraction
Quantum-resistant security
Harden L1: Post-quantum cryptography, FOCIL censorship resistance, network resilience testing—Vitalik emphasizes, “It’s no longer UX vs. security, but enhancing security through UX.”
So, if macro conditions stabilize and capital flows back, ETH doesn’t need hype—just a repricing.
This is not blind optimism; I firmly believe that winter is often the starting point of the biggest rallies.