Is ETH falling below 1900 truly an opportunity? Why do I still remain optimistic about Ethereum in 2026?

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 starts in history this year, down over 60% from the 2025 high.

Market sentiment is extremely panicked, and even insiders selling coins have added to the pressure.

1. Technical Perspective

This is also something I’ve repeatedly emphasized in the community. On the candlestick chart, we experienced a sharp drop, sideways consolidation, and the recent decline perfectly aligns with the expected final dip!

All I can do is advise everyone to hold steady, and we’ve even entered a perfect dollar-cost averaging zone. You can refer to the 2022 trend—this is the last dip!

2. Macro View

Ethereum’s daily active addresses in February remain between 550,000 and over 700,000 (mainnet). In January-February, they approached or surpassed 1 million+ new highs. The 7-day and 30-day moving averages are still rising, indicating increasing real user activity and DApp engagement.

On February 7, daily trading volume hit a record high of 2.896 million, and on February 22, it remained at over 1.7 million. Overall, early 2026 shows a significant rebound compared to the same period in 2025, driven mainly by stablecoins and Layer 2 activity.

The total supply of on-chain stablecoins on ETH is about 158-183 billion USD (over 50% of the global total), continuously climbing and reaching new highs in 2025-2026, indicating sustained growth of stablecoins.

Exchanges’ ETH reserves continue to decline, dropping to 16.2 million ETH (the lowest since 2016), with net outflows persisting into early 2026.

Therefore, combined with staking and locking, effective circulating supply has significantly tightened (about 45%+ of ETH is illiquid). Although ETH prices face short-term pressure, the network fundamentals as of February 2026 are on the verge of an explosion.

3. Institutions Are Buying, Not Selling

Retail investors are panicking, but institutions are positioning themselves. ETF capital inflows are resuming, and corporate treasuries are acquiring ETH at low prices. Traditional financial institutions continue to develop tokenized products on Ethereum.

In January, net outflows totaled $253 million, but on February 17, there was a single-day net inflow of $48.63 million (BlackRock’s ETH AUM +$22.89 million leading), and on February 13, a positive flow of $10.26 million.

Despite recent volatility, there have been multiple instances of positive inflows or zero outflows, with total AUM still exceeding $11.5 billion, indicating that institutions are beginning to re-enter around the $1900 level.

4. 2026 Roadmap Focus

Upgrade directions include:

• Increasing Gas limit
• Enhancing Layer 2 interoperability
• Expanding zero-knowledge infrastructure
• Account abstraction
• Quantum resistance

Strengthening the Layer 1: post-quantum cryptography, FOCIL anti-censorship, network resilience testing. Vitalik also emphasizes, “It’s no longer UX vs. security, but improving security through better UX.”

So, if macro stability and capital inflows continue, ETH doesn’t need hype—it just needs to be re-priced.

This isn’t blind optimism. I firmly believe that winter often marks the beginning of the biggest rebound.