Ethereum

Ethereum has retreated from the $3,400 resistance area and is now trading below $3,250 and the 100-hourly Simple Moving Average while holding support near $3,200. The recent drop pushed ETH down through $3,320, $3,280, and the 50% Fib retracement of the $3,060 to $3,402 move, with price briefly testing the $3,180 zone. As long as buyers protect the $3,180–$3,200 support band, the market could attempt a recovery toward $3,250, $3,280, and possibly the $3,320–$3,400 resistance levels, while a break lower may open the way to $3,120 or even $3,050.

Ethereum is consolidating near $3,300 as traders watch a narrowing structure and improving momentum. A January 18, 2026 post by Merlijn The Trader stressed holding $3,300 and pointed to $3.9k–$4k as a potential upside zone. The 4-hour MACD has turned upward, while patterns such as a falling wedge and double bottom are in focus.

As of January 2026, Ethereum's gas costs have fallen to $0.01, according to Etherscan. A 17 January 2026 throughput peak of 2.6 million transactions was handled smoothly after late-2025 upgrades and wider Layer-2 use. ETH traded at $3,319.87 (+0.62%), while SOL stood at $142.26 (-1.23%).

Bitcoin Hyper, a Bitcoin Layer 2 project, has raised over $30.6 million in its presale, with tokens priced at $0.013585 and an initial listing set at $0.013675. According to the publication, DeFi volumes rose 15% month-over-month, while Base and Arbitrum recorded $147,000 and $39,000 in daily fees around January 14–15, 2026, underscoring robust L2 activity ahead of HYPER's Q1 2026 launch.

Altcoins gained momentum as Bitcoin’s dominance weakened and Ethereum emerged as a key driver of sentiment, with ETH/BTC trading at 0.03484. The Altcoin Season Index fell to 35 while Total 2 formed an ascending triangle around $1.29 trillion, and several privacy-focused altcoins recorded outsized gains.

On 18 January 2026 at 19:49, data from Santiment indicated that Ethereum's Proof-of-Stake deposit contract holds about 77.85 million ETH, valued at just over $256 billion. That equals roughly 46.6% of supply, with withdrawals gated by protocol exit limits. The scale has intensified debate over long-term supply stability versus potential exit-driven pressures.

Ethereum has recently seen its daily on-chain transactions climb to around 2.8 million, marking a new all-time high and coming in about 64% above the peak activity of the 2021 bull run. At the same time, technical analysis on the three-week chart suggests ETH remains in a macro uptrend, with its market capitalization holding above the 21 EMA and compressing under historical resistance. This combination of record network usage and constructive market structure points toward a higher probability of continued upside, while still leaving room for a potential deeper correction if key support fails.

On 18 January 2026, analysis by Joao Wedson found Ethereum's correlation with the Russell 2000 has weakened after several cycles of alignment. Despite the index's positive year-over-year performance, ETH's reactions are muted. The split may reflect a shifting risk regime or crypto pricing future conditions ahead of traditional finance.

On 18 January 2026, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that growing protocol complexity is a major long-term threat to the network's decentralization. He argued that constant feature additions and reliance on highly specialized cryptography can make users dependent on a small expert class instead of the code itself. Buterin called for an explicit focus on simplification, including removing or offloading rarely used features from the core protocol to preserve Ethereum's trustlessness over decades.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned in an X post that years of protocol complexity and bloat are undermining trustlessness and self-sovereignty. He advocated pruning underused features and slimming core components to restore simplicity, setting 2026 as a year to "take back lost ground."