Ether Sinks 7.9% to $2,237 as Chip Stock Rout Wipes Out Crypto Leverage

Ether got hit hard. The token fell by 7.9% over 24 hours and was changing hands around $2,236.81 shortly before 1 a.m. German time Friday, per CoinGecko. Bitcoin dropped by 5.7% in the same window and briefly traded under $76,000. For Ether, that's the lowest daily print since mid-August.

The 24-hour range told its own story: a high of $2,433.96 and a low of $2,221.92 — a swing north of $210, nearly 9% in a single session. Over seven days Ether is down just 1.9%, because it had spiked Wednesday. It still sits roughly 17% below its 30-day high of about $2,697, with market cap near $273 billion and 24-hour volume just over $17 billion.

The trigger came from outside crypto. The Nasdaq closed 5.52% lower Thursday, the S&P 500 shed 4.36% and the Dow 3.44%, according to Yahoo Finance's live blog. The SOX semiconductor index cratered 12%, Nvidia finished more than 10% down and AMD fell 15% intraday. When tech gets sold, crypto gets sold faster — it trades around the clock and it's the easiest thing to turn into cash.

Then came the liquidations. CoinGlass data analysed by ETHNews on November 5 showed $1.03 billion in positions closed out in 24 hours, $924.94 million of it longs — 89.4% — across 199,365 traders. Ether accounted for $163.83 million and Bitcoin $255.88 million, with the biggest single hit a $10.94 million ETH position on Binance's ETHUSDT pair. Ether is under a fifth of Bitcoin's market cap, yet it absorbed nearly two thirds of Bitcoin's liquidation total.

Fund demand was already thin. US spot Ether ETFs bled $85.35 million on November 3, the seventh consecutive day of outflows, according to a KuCoin report citing SoSoValue. BlackRock's ETHA accounted for $74.44 million of that, with Grayscale's Ethereum Mini Trust adding $10.91 million. Assets across all US spot Ether ETFs stood at $13.321 billion, with $12.063 billion in net inflows since launch. cryptoticker.io calculated on November 4 that the average entry price for ETF buyers was around $3,200 — deep underwater, which makes more redemptions likelier if the pain continues.

What matters now: Ether trades above its 200-day moving average near $2,160 but well below its 50-day average around $2,510. The first hurdle on the way up is $2,434, Wednesday's peak. The ETH/BTC ratio sits near 0.0294, and the weakness spread to Solana, Cardano and Uniswap on Thursday. One relief valve — the $1.03 billion flush cleared leverage out of the system, so a second wave of the same size is less likely unless traders pile back in.