Ethereum climbed more than 12% over the past week, reaching $1,937.60 after sweeping liquidity near $1,750. Short sellers absorbed $110.93 million of the $126.97 million in total ETH liquidat
Ethereum has added roughly 12% to its price over the past week, climbing from a swept low near $1,750 to an intraday high of $1,937.60 on July 15. Over $110 million in short positions got liquidated in a single day as the move accelerated, and the rally has landed alongside renewed comments from Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin defending the network’s low-fee scaling strategy, so traders now have both a technical breakout and a fundamental narrative pointing the same direction.
Looking at the 30-minute ETH/USDT chart on Binance, price dipped to $1,750.51 on July 13 in a sharp wick that cleared out stop-loss orders below a range that had held for two sessions, then snapped back within the same candle. That kind of move usually means larger buyers used the forced selling from stopped-out traders to build positions cheaply.
ETH/USDT 30-minute chart, Binance. Chart by Alexander Stefanov, TradingView. The sweep landed almost exactly on the 0.786 Fibonacci retracement at $1,792.57, measured against the broader move up to the current high — a manually stopped-out low lining up with a mathematically derived level, which tells you real buying interest exists in that zone rather than just algorithmic noise.
ETH spent about a day building higher lows after the sweep, then a single 30-minute candle on July 14 changed the structure entirely. Volume spiked well above anything seen in the prior week as price broke through $1,800 and closed near $1,860 — the clearest event on the whole chart, separating the basing phase from the current uptrend. Since then, Ethereum has consolidated between $1,859.97 and roughly $1,900, a floor sitting within about $12 of the 0.382 Fibonacci retracement at $1,871.98. Two independently derived levels landing that close together is worth treating as a genuine support cluster.
The Relative Strength Index, a momentum gauge that flags a market as overbought above 70, sits at 71.43 right now. The same indicator touched nearly 80 on July 11 during a smaller advance that preceded the two-day consolidation which eventually produced this week’s sweep. History doesn’t repeat on command, but an RSI reading in the low 70s after a 12% weekly gain is the kind of condition that has cooled off before on this exact chart. That’s a risk to weigh, not a signal to trade against the trend on.
Liquidation data from CoinGlass over the past 24 hours shows $126.97 million in total ETH wipeouts, and the split is lopsided: $110.93 million from shorts against just $16.04 million in longs. Liquidations happen when a leveraged trader’s margin can no longer cover an open position and the exchange force-closes it. A ratio this skewed toward shorts means traders betting on a pullback got run over as price pushed through resistance, and that kind of one-sided event often fuels a rally on its own, since forced short covering generates buying pressure disconnected from anyone’s actual view on ETH.
In my opinion, Ethereum L1 revenue fees should stay low to foster growth. Tens of thousands of companies will set up shop over the next 2-3 years on some mix of Ethereum L1, L2s, and private permissioned EVMs like Besu chains which will be fully interoperable with L2s and L1s.… https://t.co/UeihCOFuzp
— Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) July 14, 2026
Lubin’s argument is that Ethereum’s mainnet should keep transaction fees low rather than compete on execution cost, because low fees will bring tens of thousands of businesses onto some mix of Ethereum’s base layer, its Layer 2 rollups, and private permissioned EVM chains built on tools like Hyperledger Besu, all fully interoperable with each other over the next two to three years. That flood of activity doesn’t need high fees per transaction to matter in his framework — millions of transactions across thousands of these networks add up to meaningful aggregate revenue flowing back to Ethereum as the settlement layer, while staking removes ETH from circulating supply and the burn mechanism trims the token base further. Put together, he argues this pushes Ethereum into what the community calls an “ultrasound” state: structurally deflationary even as usage climbs.
Not everyone reads the data the same way. Skeptics counter that L2 networks keep up to 75-80% of execution fees, cutting into L1 revenue directly rather than adding to it, and that if L2 efficiency keeps L1 gas too low, burning slows and supply drifts back toward mild inflation instead of Lubin’s deflationary flywheel. A rising staking ratio also compresses validator yields over time, which could push capital toward other assets entirely.
L1 Revenue Bull case Aggregate volume across thousands of L2s and enterprise chains offsets low per-transaction fees Bear case L2 networks keep up to 75-80% of execution fees, cutting into L1 revenue directly Token Supply Bull case High volume triggers heavier burning, pushing ETH toward a deflationary supply curve Bear case If L2 efficiency keeps L1 gas too low, burning slows and supply drifts back toward mild inflation Staking Yield Bull case ETH becomes the default collateral asset for institutions and private ledgers Bear case A rising staking ratio compresses validator yields, pushing capital toward other assetsThe staking ratio has reached an all-time high above 32%, with close to 39 million ETH locked, removing something in the neighborhood of $80 billion in liquid ETH from exchanges. A supply base that thin means demand spikes can move price faster than in a deeper market.
On the scaling side, 22 active rollups now secure close to $35 billion in value, though that figure has fallen nearly 29% over the past year as L2 activity has cooled from earlier peaks. Ethereum’s own DeFi ecosystem holds $41.17 billion in total value locked directly on the base layer according to DeFiLlama, up 4.31% in the past 24 hours, a sign mainnet activity remains healthy even as aggregate L2 value pulls back. Hyperledger Besu, meanwhile, has become the dominant client for institutional deployments, accounting for roughly 16% of public mainnet nodes, largely because it plugs directly into existing EVM and ERC standards.
Robinhood’s decision to build its own blockchain infrastructure rather than rely on a single monolithic chain was one of the events that reignited this debate, with ARK Invest analysts framing Ethereum’s role as closer to a landlord than a competitor. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund follows a similar pattern, tokenizing traditional financial instruments directly on Ethereum’s public layer while keeping compliance work on connected, permissioned rails. Both support Lubin’s argument that the demand isn’t for cheap blockspace so much as for Ethereum’s settlement guarantees.
For short-term traders, $1,860 to $1,900 is the level to watch — holding it on a pullback confirms the breakout, while a clean break below $1,792 puts the whole move in question. Longer-term holders should read this week differently: the staking and burn dynamics Lubin points to play out over quarters, not days, so this rally says more about short positioning getting cleared out than any fundamental shift happening in real time.
That distinction is exactly where funding rates come in. Rates on ETH perpetuals sat close to flat for much of the past two months, but they’ve already turned positive, printing 0.0082 as of July 15 — a sign fresh leveraged longs are building rather than just short covering. Whether that rate holds over the coming days will matter more than the price level itself for whether this rally has real legs or simply settles back into its old range.
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