Can ETH Bulls Hold $1,500 Support as Selloff Deepens?

The Ethereum price is in freefall. Seven days of consistent selling pressure has stripped 17% off ETH's value, leaving it marooned at $1,682 as of Friday morning, well below the $1,700 line that bulls spent months defending. The broader crypto market is bleeding alongside it, but Ethereum's underperformance relative to Bitcoin is drawing fresh scrutiny from traders who had already been questioning ETH's short-term narrative.

Tom Lee Bets Big on ETH Even as Losses Mount

BitMine is the largest corporate holder of Ethereum on record, and the company's chairman Tom Lee is not flinching. Despite BitMine sitting on roughly BitMine Ethereum unrealized losses of nearly $9 billion at current prices, Lee took the stage at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris and delivered one of the most aggressively bullish calls in recent memory: Ethereum reaching $250,000.

That number sounds absurd in a market where ETH can't hold $1,700. But Lee's reasoning is not purely speculative. His thesis centers on a coming wave of autonomous AI agents that will need to transact with each other in real time, across borders, without human intermediaries. Ethereum's smart contract architecture and its entrenched developer ecosystem, he argued, make it the only credible settlement layer for that kind of machine-to-machine economic activity.

Lee also called attention to a structural shift inside the Ethereum Foundation itself. The Foundation has quietly cut its ETH holdings to a small fraction of total supply, which Lee sees as a signal that the protocol is maturing beyond its early infrastructure phase. Whether the market agrees right now is a different question.

Speaking to reporters, Lee said current pessimism around Tom Lee ETH $250,000 represents a strong long-term buying opportunity, framing the selloff as the market underestimating what Ethereum actually is: not just a crypto asset, but a settlement currency for machine-driven global commerce.

What Does the Ethereum Price Chart Say Right Now?

The chart is not telling a comforting story. On the weekly timeframe, Ethereum price is trading well beneath both its 50-day EMA at around $2,116 and its 100-day EMA near $2,223. Both of those moving averages now act as a ceiling, not a floor. That overhead supply zone has been reinforced by six consecutive days of net selling.

On the daily chart, momentum indicators have crossed into territory that usually precedes either capitulation or a relief bounce. The RSI has dropped to 29, that is technically oversold, but oversold conditions in a bear trend can persist far longer than traders expect. The MACD is still printing below its signal line, meaning downside pressure is the path of least resistance despite any brief rallies that might emerge.

The immediate problem for bulls is that ETH already slipped below the February 6 low of $1,747. That support had held for months and breaking it opens a clear path toward $1,538, a level that provided brief footing earlier this year. Below that, the real danger zone kicks in at $1,380, an area last visited in April 2025 that could become a liquidity magnet if sellers stay organized.

The $1,500 psychological level sits squarely in the middle of this range and is already drawing attention. Round numbers in crypto almost always act as flashpoints, and with bears in control on every major timeframe, the burden of proof falls entirely on the bulls.

There is a minor lifeline. If the $1,630 support level manages to hold through the weekend, ETH could stage a relief rally targeting the $1,835 resistance area. That is the first meaningful overhead level. Getting through it, however, is not a given, traders would need to see a decisive break above $1,835 before any realistic conversation about reclaiming the $2,070 resistance zone can even start.

Six days of consecutive red candles on ETH is not just a price story. It reflects a broader confidence problem that the Ethereum community has been wrestling with throughout 2026: the narrative around layer-2 fragmentation, competition from alternative smart contract platforms, and the slow rollout of protocol upgrades that were supposed to cement Ethereum's dominance. Tom Lee may be right about the ten-year view, but right now, the daily close is all that matters to most market participants.

BitMine's $9 billion paper loss is a number that deserves more attention than it's getting. Corporate treasuries holding volatile assets at scale create a specific kind of market dynamic. If prices fall far enough, the pressure to reduce exposure can accelerate selling rather than absorb it. Whether BitMine has any such trigger points has not been disclosed publicly, but it is a risk worth tracking as the selloff continues.