The Ethereum price was $2,417.10 at 09:48 GMT+1 on Thursday, up 4.07% over 24 hours, per TradingView. Ether has given back part of an overnight bounce that reached 7% at its strongest reading.
Two explanations sit behind the move, and the morning’s data supports both of them. Short sellers were squeezed hard as the rebound ran, and US spot ether ETFs bought for the first time in seven sessions on Wednesday. The Ethereum price also outran bitcoin on the way up, which is a reversal of the pattern through most of October.
The bounce began while US votes were still being counted, which puts most of the Ethereum price recovery ahead of any confirmed result. Source: TradingViewThe Ethereum Price Has Given Back Part of the Bounce
Readings taken across Thursday morning show the move fading rather than extending through the session. CoinMarketCap had ether at $2,423 and up 7.15% in its late Wednesday recap, CoinGecko had $2,423.19 and 5.8% at 05:40 UTC, and crypto.news carried $2,426.86 and 5.69% at 07:19 UTC. TradingView’s 4.07% at 09:48 GMT+1 is the softest of the set.
Context matters for judging how much that bounce is actually worth to a holder. The Ethereum price is up 2.58% over a week but down 10.80% over a month, 18.51% this year and 26.43% over twelve months, on a market capitalization of $295.50 billion. Open interest rose 5.52% to $18.41 billion with funding at 0.0079%, so positioning is building again rather than unwinding.
Ether Beat Bitcoin by More Than Two Points
At 07:19 UTC bitcoin was $80,596 and up 3.37% while ether was up 5.69%, according to crypto.news. That put the Ethereum price 2.32 percentage points ahead of bitcoin on the same clock.
Leveraged products stretched the Ethereum price gap considerably further than the spot funds did. The 2x Ether ETF rose 11.56% and ProShares Ultra Ether 11.36%, against roughly 5.6% to 5.9% for the spot funds, which is what happens when traders reach for exposure rather than accumulate it. Bitcoin’s recovery from its seven-week low ran on FinanceFeeds on Wednesday, when the overnight trough was $75,653.
Seven Sessions of Outflows Ended on 4 November
US spot ether ETFs took in $53.02 million on Wednesday, their first net inflow since 23 October. That is the first flow tailwind the Ethereum price has had in two weeks. The seven sessions before that removed $656.69 million, by SoSoValue’s daily data.
One session does not make a trend, though bitcoin funds turned the same day with $74.6 million after three sessions of withdrawals. Source: SoSoValue · Chart: FinanceFeedsBlackRock’s ETHA led with $32.75 million, Fidelity’s FETH added $19.24 million and the two Grayscale funds took $23.28 million between them. BlackRock’s staked product ETHB was the one fund that lost money, at $22.38 million. The complex now holds $14.12 billion, or 4.77% of ether’s market value, so ETF demand is a real but secondary input to the Ethereum price.
The sixth straight day of ether ETF outflows and the $208 million of crypto ETF withdrawals on 3 November both ran on FinanceFeeds, and that 3 November session was the seventh. Wednesday ended the run.
Investor Takeaway
One inflow after $656.69 million of outflows is a break in the pattern rather than proof of a turn, so the Ethereum price case rests on whether Thursday and Friday follow.
Shorts Were 58% of the Liquidations
CoinGlass recorded $197.24 million of ether liquidations over 24 hours, split $114.55 million short against $82.69 million long. That is 58.08% on the short side, 1.80 times the seven-day average, with 8,781 traders closed out and a single liquidation of $37.99 million at the top. CoinGlass also puts Ethereum price volatility above 6.06% across the day.
The venue split points toward leveraged retail flow rather than institutional hedging activity. HTX accounted for 34.6% of ether liquidations, Binance 26.56% and Gate 14.76%. Peak damage came in the 16:00 to 17:00 hour on 4 November. TradingView’s feed reads $154.83 million for the same window, so treat the exact total as approximate.
Forced short covering adds buying that disappears once the positions are gone, which is the weakest kind of support an Ethereum price rally can have. Source: CoinGlass · Chart: FinanceFeedsStolen Funds Keep Turning Into Ether
Two separate thefts this year produced genuine buying demand for ether in the open market. The Binance attacker swapped altcoins into 70,480 ETH after the $6.3 billion breach, and a wallet that bought 27,553 ETH overnight into Monday was tied by investigator ZachXBT to a suspected theft from an EU entity’s exchange accounts.
The mechanism is the same in both cases, and it comes down to what can be frozen. Circle can freeze USDC and nobody can freeze ether, so stolen stablecoins get converted fast, a point worth reading alongside Circle’s third-quarter numbers. Neither flow is large enough to set the Ethereum price, though both add bid. One tranche was 16,658 ETH bought inside two hours for $62.97 million at an average of $2,286.
Thielen Sees Bitcoin Beating Ether From Here
Not everyone reads the bounce as the start of a turn in the trend. Markus Thielen expects downside for ether as Layer 2 networks pull activity off the main chain, cutting Ethereum fees and the amount of ETH burned, and he expects bitcoin to outperform ether over the medium term.
TradingView’s own indicators disagree for now, with moving averages on strong buy and oscillators on buy. The Ethereum price needs to hold above Wednesday’s low for either reading to be tested, and the ETF print on Thursday will say more about flows than one squeezed session can.
Investor Takeaway
Short liquidations at 58% of the total mean the Ethereum price rally was partly forced buying, so the follow-through on Thursday matters more than the size of Wednesday’s move.