Author:Mr. Bai
As of February 2026, the crypto market seems to have entered a winter. ETH has fallen below 1900, marking one of the worst performances at the start of the year, down more than 60% from its peak in 2025.
Market sentiment is extremely fearful, and even insiders selling coins has intensified the pressure.
First, let's talk about the technical aspects
This is something I have repeatedly stressed in the community: on the candlestick chart, we have experienced sharp declines and sideways movements, and the recent drop perfectly conforms to the expected final drop!
What I can do is to let everyone hold on, and we have even reached the perfect investment area, which can be referenced against the trends of 2022; this is the final drop!
Second, let's look at the macro
In February, Ethereum had an active address count maintained at 550,000-700,000+ (mainnet), having approached/exceeded 1 million+ in early February. The 7-day/30-day moving averages are still trending upwards, indicating that the number of real users and DApp activity is increasing.
On February 7, the single-day trading volume reached a historic high of 2.896M, and on February 22, it remained above 1.7 million. Overall, early 2026 has significantly rebounded compared to the same period in 2025, with stablecoin and L2 activity being the main drivers.
The total supply of stablecoins on the ETH chain is approximately $158-183 billion (accounting for over 50% of the global total), continuing to climb and reach new highs through 2025-2026, indicating thatstablecoins are continuing to grow!
Exchange ETH reserves continue to decline, with total exchange ETH reserves dropping to 16.2M ETH (the lowest since 2016), with continuous net outflows at the beginning of 2026.
Therefore, combined with the staking lock-up, the effective circulating supply has significantly tightened (about 45%+ ETH has become illiquid), and although the ETH price is under short-term pressure, the network fundamentals are on the eve of an explosion in February 2026.
Third, institutions are buying, not fleeing
Retail investors are in panic, but institutions are laying out strategies. ETF inflows have recovered, and corporate treasuries are acquiring ETH at low levels. Traditional financial institutions continue to create tokenized products on Ethereum.
In January, there was a net outflow of $253 million, but on February 17, there was a single-day net inflow of $48.63 million (BlackRock ETHA leading with +$22.89 million on that day), and it also flipped positively at +$10.26 million on February 13.
Although there have been fluctuations recently, multiple positive inflows/zero outflows have appeared, and the cumulative AUM still exceeds $11.5 billion, indicating that institutions are starting to reposition around $1900.
Fourth, focus on the 2026 roadmap
Upgrade directions include:
Increase the gas limit
Enhance L2 interoperability
Expand zero-knowledge infrastructures
Account abstraction
Quantum-resistant security
Harden the L1: Post-quantum cryptography, FOCIL anti-censorship, network resilience testing. Vitalik also emphasizes that “it’s no longer UX vs security, but enhancing the security of UX.”
So, if the macro environment stabilizes and funds flow back, ETH does not need speculation, just needs to be repriced.
This is not blind optimism; I firmly believe that winter is often the starting point for the greatest rebounds.
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