Ethereum Just Closed Its First Three Red Quarters Ever
ETH fell in Q4 2025, Q1, and Q2 2026 — a first since 2016. Here's why whales and treasuries kept buying while ETFs sold.
Ethereum closed Q2 2026 down 24.77%, its third consecutive losing quarter. Combined with a 28.28% drop in Q4 2025 and a 29.26% drop in Q1 2026, that's the first three-quarter losing streak in ETH's trading history going back to 2016. The prior worst stretch, in 2018 and again in 2019, never made it past two quarters.
The streak coincided with persistent spot ETH ETF outflows — yet corporate treasuries and large wallets kept accumulating through the entire decline. That split between who sold and who bought is the more useful story than the streak itself, especially with ETH bouncing more than 5% today on a weak jobs report.
The Losing Streak Nobody Has Seen Before
ETH peaked near $4,953 in August 2025. By the end of June 2026 it was trading around $1,560 to $1,570 — a roughly 70% drawdown from that high. Three consecutive red quarters has no precedent in Ethereum's dataset since 2016, which covers the 2018 bear market, the 2020 COVID crash, and the 2022 Terra/FTX collapse.
| Quarter | ETH price change |
|---|---|
| Q4 2025 | -28.28% |
| Q1 2026 | -29.26% |
| Q2 2026 | -24.77% |
A single bad quarter is normal in crypto. Three in a row without a green quarter in between signals something more structural than a routine drawdown — sustained selling pressure with no interruption long enough to reset sentiment.
Why ETFs Sold While Whales and Treasuries Bought
Spot Ethereum ETFs logged their seventh straight week of net outflows heading into late June, shedding roughly $273 million in the week to June 26 alone. More than $10 billion in ETF assets under management evaporated over 2026 as price fell alongside the redemptions. That's the same institutional-exodus pattern documented in Bitcoin's ETF flows turning negative for the year — capital that entered through regulated fund wrappers left first.
The buyers on the other side of that selling were treasuries and whales, not retail. SharpLink Gaming added 10,000 ETH on June 30 at an average of roughly $1,611, pushing its total holdings above 886,000 ETH, after buying another $16 million worth just days earlier. Roughly 500,000 ETH — about $800 million — moved off exchanges in a single week in mid-June, a pattern consistent with large holders parking coins in private wallets instead of selling into the drawdown. BitMine's accumulation through the same period, detailed in BitMine's ETH treasury nearing 5% of supply, shows the same behavior at even larger scale.
That divergence matters: ETF outflows represent forced or sentiment-driven selling by fund holders, while treasury and whale buying represents conviction bets with a multi-year time horizon. Both can be true at once, and neither cancels the other out on a weekly chart — but they answer different questions about who actually believes the drawdown is temporary.
What Changed This Week: A Weak Jobs Report
June payrolls rose just 57,000 against a 110,000 forecast, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics also revising April and May down by a combined 74,000. The probability of a Fed rate hike by September fell from roughly 65% to 50% on the print, based on CME FedWatch pricing. Bitcoin jumped more than 4% to trade above $61,800 within hours, and Ethereum outperformed with a gain of over 5%, moving back above $1,730.
That's a fast, mechanical reaction: weaker labor data lowers the odds of tighter policy, and rate-sensitive risk assets react immediately. It doesn't erase three quarters of losses, and one jobs print is not a trend reversal on its own.
What to Watch From Here
A few concrete signals separate a genuine bottom from a one-day bounce:
- Whether the ETF outflow streak actually breaks, not just slows — weekly flow data publishes every Thursday or Friday
- Whether treasury buying continues below $1,600, where BitMine's and SharpLink's blended cost bases sit
- The September FOMC meeting, now the focal point after this week's rate-cut repricing
- Whether exchange balances keep falling, which would confirm coins are leaving circulation rather than just changing hands
None of these resolve today. They're the data points that will tell you, over the next several weeks, whether this bounce is the start of Q3 breaking the streak or another short-lived reaction inside a longer downtrend.
Ethereum's three-quarter losing streak is now a historical fact, not a sentiment reading — the numbers are locked in regardless of what happens next. What isn't locked in is whether the treasury and whale accumulation that continued through the entire decline turns out to have been early or premature. Track exchange outflows and whale wallet activity on the Whale Activity Tracker, and you can swap into Ethereum directly on Zest Exchange if you're positioning around either side of that question.