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In line with its bearish market structure, the Ethereum price struggled significantly in the first week of February. The cryptocurrency’s value fell by more than 30% over the week, crashing to as low as $1,850 on Friday, February 6. Amid the Ethereum market downturn, a significant development has emerged — one which could make or mar the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency.

Ethereum Breaches Realized Price Across All Investor Cohorts

In a recent post on Quicktake, on-chain analyst MorenoDV shared a shocking development within the Ethereum network. The analyst highlighted that the Ethereum price recently slipped below the cost basis of multiple investor groups. 

The revelation is based on the Realized Price by Balance Cohorts metric, which monitors the average on-chain cost basis of Ethereum holders. The metric groups these investors by wallet size, showing where these cohorts are holding profitably or running at losses. 

In the chart above, we see the Ethereum price break beneath multiple cost bases (represented with yellow, green, blue, and purple lines). The most striking, however, is the loss of the realized price of the largest holders (with 100k ETH and above stored), which stands at around $2,074. 

Historically, the realized price of this investor class (with more than 100k ETH in holdings) has taken on dual roles for the Ethereum price, depending on its trajectory. According to data from 2019, mid-2020, and late 2022 price actions, whale realized price typically takes on a role of formidably resisting price during downtrends; during uptrends, it interestingly acts as reliable support. 

Hence, at periods where the Ethereum price stabs through the whale realized price to the downside, MorenoDV explained that two potential paths typically emerge. In his words: “either a violent snap-back rally as the level flips to support (2020, 2022), or further capitulation into multi-year lows (2018-2019).”

Major ETH Price Levels To Watch

Because the Ethereum price went through all investor cohorts’ realized prices at the same time, there is something worth noting here. MorenoDV pointed out that smaller holders collectively have their realized prices between the $2,534 – $2,675 range.

Thus, should the Ethereum price attempt to recover previous legs, the $2,534–$2,675 price range will pose significant resistance to that effort. However, the aforementioned range is not the most critical one for the Ethereum price. 

The analyst highlighted the whale cohort’s realized price, which is approximately $2,074 — to be the most critical for the Ethereum price. Following previous extrapolations, a reclamation of this level would likely follow historical trends and push prices upwards, while failure to retake this level within a period of 30 – 45 days would precede significant drawdowns.

In the event that the latter scenario holds true, the Ethereum price could swiftly fall to $1,800, or even lower. If price breaks beneath $1,800 and is sustained below this level, MorenoDV hypothesizes that this could lead Ethereum to the $1,600–$1,300 levels.

As of this writing, Ethereum stands at a valuation of $2,030, reflecting an over 7% jump in the past 24 hours. 

The price of ETH on the daily timeframe | Source: ETHUSDT chart on TradingView

Featured image from iStock, chart from TradingView

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Charles Hoskinson recently argued that the launch of TRUMP three days before President Donald Trump’s inauguration derailed what would have been a 70-vote Senate majority for the CLARITY Act and turned a unified crypto-policy push into a partisan battle.

In an interview, Hoskinson said that in December 2024, “we were expecting about 70 senators to vote for the CLARITY act and a super majority of the house,” and that launching TRUMP before the bill passed turned crypto “from bipartisan to crypto equals Trump equals bad equals corruption.”

He also tied the coin’s launch to the Bitcoin-only rally that defined 2025, arguing that “government interference” and the Trump scandal distorted flows away from altcoins and locked capital in BTC.

It’s a compelling narrative: one bad decision by Trump blew up the policy and market setup. The legislative record and market data tell a more complicated story.

TRUMP launched in January 2025 with 200 million tokens sold and 800 million retained by Trump-controlled entities.

Ethics experts and some pro-crypto Republicans immediately flagged it as a conflict-of-interest vehicle: a sitting president selling a meme coin while setting crypto policy. By May 6, the first concrete legislative fallout appeared.

Maxine Waters pulled the plug on a joint House Financial Services and Agriculture hearing on crypto market-structure rules, explicitly citing Trump’s memecoin and World Liberty Financial as abuses of power.

Hoskinson is right that TRUMP made the legislative path harder. But a few details complicate the picture. First, crypto had already drifted into Trumpworld before the coin.

Trump campaigned as “the crypto president,” raised significant funds from the industry, and cut a lucrative deal with World Liberty Financial, where his family claims a large share of token and fee revenue.

Ethics concerns about that deal and its stablecoin USD1 were surfacing well before Waters killed that May hearing. Second, the legislative story didn’t end with the canceled hearing.

Despite the drama, House Republicans and a slice of Democrats still moved core bills.

By mid-2025, the House approved the GENIUS Act for stablecoins and the Digital Asset Market Structure CLARITY Act with bipartisan votes, though far from unanimous.

Coverage stressed that “many Democrats fiercely oppose” the package, viewing it as too friendly to industry and too entangled with Trump’s personal ventures, even as others crossed the aisle to vote yes.

That coalition looks different from the 70-senator cakewalk Hoskinson described. It’s the GOP that is almost unified, along with a minority of Democrats, while a loud progressive faction and ethics hawks push back.

Third, Waters’ objection centered on self-dealing and abuse of office, not partisan hostility to crypto. She argued she couldn’t sit in a “crypto market structure” hearing while the sitting president was running a memecoin and stablecoin empire that might personally benefit from whatever regime they wrote.

The distinction matters: it wasn’t that Democrats suddenly decided “crypto equals Trump.” It was that Trump’s projects made conflict-of-interest questions unavoidable.

Votes and the timeline

There is no public whip count showing 70 locked-in Senate votes for CLARITY in December 2024. The record shows that congressional committees have advanced bills with bipartisan votes, but Democrats are increasingly split between centrists and progressives.

Stories about World Liberty and TRUMP hardened opposition among Democrats who might otherwise have been persuadable. At least one major hearing was canceled due to those Trump-linked projects, Waters said in her statement.

There was a bipartisan lane for crypto, but it was fragile and contingent on the White House not turning regulation into a vehicle for presidential enrichment.

TRUMP exposed a conflict-of-interest problem that many Democrats were already nervous about, rather than creating partisan opposition from scratch.

Even after the TRUMP backlash, Congress still managed to pass GENIUS and move CLARITY out of the House, which suggests the memecoin didn’t kill legislation outright.

Bitcoin-only rally was already baked in

Hoskinson also tied the Bitcoin-only rally and lagging alts to “government interference” and the memecoin saga. The market data points to different drivers.

Several independent 2025 reports hit the same themes. An institutional and retail flow shock into spot Bitcoin ETFs, with research showing that new ETF buyers overwhelmingly concentrated on BTC, a pattern that “shifted capital away from the broader altcoin market.”

A maturing, more cautious market, with CoinGlass and other derivatives shops flagging “persistent weakness in ETH and the broader altcoin market” tied to reduced risk appetite, tougher competition, and lack of new killer apps, not just politics.

Bitcoin dominance ground higher through mid-2025, with market commentary repeatedly noting BTC’s share of the total crypto market cap in the mid-60s to 70%, while altcoins lagged even during upswings.

One June analysis explicitly tied that to ETF-driven demand being “treated similarly to gold,” with dips bought and pumps sustained, while altcoin liquidity stayed thin.

Zooming into coins like XRP or SOL shows a story driven by product and regulatory plumbing: ETF approvals and pauses, uncertainty around which assets the SEC will tolerate in exchange-traded wrappers, and uneven institutional custody support.

When the SEC green-lit and then paused a Bitwise altcoin index ETF conversion, XRP and other majors suffered whipsaws due to regulatory uncertainty, not TRUMP drama.

Trump’s memecoin and World Liberty scandals added headline risk and made some institutions more cautious about crypto exposure, while ethics questions were unresolved.

However, the primary reasons this cycle looks like “Bitcoin first, maybe alts later” are structural. ETFs and treasuries made BTC the cleanest institutional trade. Regulation is clearer for BTC and, to a lesser extent, ETH than for most altcoins. Risk appetite and innovation are thinner outside a handful of L1 ecosystems.

None of that required TRUMP to exist.

Yet, Hoskinson is right on the optics. Launching a presidential memecoin before a major regulatory bill was always going to complicate the politics.

Waters’ May statement makes that concrete: she couldn’t negotiate market structure while the president was monetizing his office through the same instruments they were trying to regulate.

However, the broader causal claims run into the data. No 70-vote Senate coalition was documented in December 2024. There was a fragile bipartisan opening that Trump’s crypto empire, consisting of World Liberty first, then TRUMP, made politically harder for Democrats who feared endorsing self-dealing.