ETH price moved above $2,150 as Bitcoin and US stock markets rallied, but does data show whether derivatives traders have turned bullish yet?
Key takeaways:
Ethereum maintains dominance in its total value locked metric, yet faces scrutiny over layer-2 scaling.
ETH inflation rose to 0.8% as onchain activity slowed, while US macroeconomic fears kept the derivatives markets in bearish territory.
Ether (ETH) price managed to reclaim the $2,100 level following a 43% crash over nine days that culminated in the altcoin making a $1,750 low on Friday. Despite a 22% relief bounce after hitting its lowest price since April 2025, ETH derivatives markets continue to reflect investors’ fears of further downside. Regardless of whether the macroeconomic environment is driving investor concerns, the odds of sustainable bullish momentum for ETH in the short term remain dim.
ETH two-month futures annualized premium. Source: laevitas.ch
ETH monthly futures traded at a 3% premium relative to regular spot markets on Monday, which is below the 5% neutral threshold. This lack of optimism among Ether traders has been constant over the past month, showing no signs of improvement even as the price dropped toward $1,800. Unless bulls step in to demonstrate a strong appetite for risk at these levels, bears will likely remain in control.
ETH/USD (orange) vs. total crypto capitalization (blue). Source: TradingView
ETH has underperformed the broader cryptocurrency market capitalization by 9% in 2026, leading investors to question what is driving capital away. From a broader perspective, the declining interest in decentralized applications (DApps) is not exclusive to Ethereum. The network remains the dominant leader in Total Value Locked (TVL) and fee generation when aggregating its layer-2 solutions.
Blockchains ranked by TVL (left) and 30-day fees (right), USD. Source: DefiLlama
Deposits on the Ethereum base layer account for 58% of the entire blockchain industry; that figure surpasses 65% when including Base, Arbitrum and Optimism. For instance, the largest application on Solana hardly exceeds $2 billion in deposits. By comparison,…
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