Monday to Thursday, 31 August to 3 September
Friday, 4 September: a fresh high, then the jobs report
The weekend: 5 to 7 September
Whales Buying, Retail Selling
ETF demand cooled off sharply
Behind the scenes: Vitalik on Ethereum's cryptographic future
What it means
Part of a seriesEther started the week at $2,470. It's ending at $2,490, basically flat. But flat is hiding a real tug of war underneath: retail wallets have been selling for two weeks straight, whales bought against them this week, and ETF demand has cooled off hard from August's pace. Here's everything that happened.
ETH closed Monday at $2,470, up 2.10%. Tuesday reversed, down 1.99% to $2,420. Wednesday kept sliding, down 1.10% to $2,390, its low point for the week. Nothing dramatic drove any of these moves on its own; ether was mostly along for the ride while the wider market digested the same Fed-related noise hitting bitcoin.
Fed Governor Christopher Waller's comments on holding rates steady sent risk assets flying across the board, and ether rode it up 4.83% to $2,510, clearing $2,500 for the first time in a week.
ETH pushed further to $2,530, up 0.76%, briefly approaching the $2,550 zone before the August jobs report landed and risk appetite reversed across crypto. Ether held up better than Bitcoin's sharper reversal that day, but the momentum was already fading.
Ethereum's full week, 31 August to 7 September 2026. Built from verified data points cited in TwelveData, Fortune, Sunday Guardian Live, MetaMask, CoinDesk and Cryptonomist reporting.
Saturday brought the pullback. ETH slid roughly 2% to around $2,455 as the stronger-than-expected jobs report kept weighing on sentiment, slipping back under $2,500 and facing what one report called a crucial test around the $2,400 to $2,450 zone. It found buyers there and kept climbing through Sunday, setting up an even stronger open heading into Monday.
Monday, ETH opened at $2,514.80, its strongest opening since 22 August, before drifting back to trade around $2,488 to $2,504 through the day. The Crypto Fear and Greed Index sat at 71, solidly in Greed territory, even as the broader market cap slipped slightly on the day.
Underneath the price chop, on-chain data told a more interesting story. Wallets holding between 1,000 and 10,000 ETH, the retail-to-mid-size cohort, sold a combined 307,000 ETH over the week, according to CryptoQuant data, their second straight week of net selling. That group started distributing once ETH cooled off near $2,500, just above their average cost basis of roughly $2,265, banking profit rather than waiting for more. Whale wallets took the other side, adding 82,000 ETH over the same stretch. Two very different groups of holders reading the same price action in opposite ways.
August was a genuinely strong month for spot Ethereum ETFs. Farside Investors recorded roughly $1.57 billion in net inflows between 18 and 31 August, with nine of those ten trading sessions landing positive. This week broke that rhythm. Monday brought $87.6 million in. Tuesday slowed to just $8.6 million. Wednesday flipped negative, $48.2 million out, the week's only red day. Thursday's Waller-fuelled rally pulled that back hard with $141.4 million in, before Friday settled at a modest $25.9 million. Add it up and the week landed at $215.3 million, a fraction of August's pace. Demand didn't disappear. It just stopped being the one-directional tailwind it was for most of last month.
US spot Ethereum ETF net daily flows, 31 August to 4 September 2026, five trading days. Built from verified data cited directly from Farside Investors' live flow table.
Away from price, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin used the week to talk about where the protocol's cryptography is headed, discussing progress on EIP-8141 and putting roughly 60% odds on SNARKs, fully homomorphic encryption, and indistinguishability obfuscation reaching single-digit computational overhead by the end of the decade. It's the kind of update that won't move price this week or next, but it's the sort of groundwork that shapes what Ethereum can actually do years from now.
$2,544 is the level that capped this week, the specific resistance ETH got turned back from more than once, with $2,520 flagged as the more immediate hurdle standing in the way of another attempt. $2,400 to $2,450 held as support every time it got tested. The tug of war between selling retail wallets and buying whales, layered on top of ETF demand that's clearly cooling from August's pace, is what's keeping ether range-bound rather than trending in either direction. A clean break above $2,520 to $2,544 would be the first sign that's changing. A close back under $2,400 would suggest the retail sellers are starting to win.
Data as of 7 September 2026. Prices and figures sourced from TwelveData, Fortune, Sunday Guardian Live, MetaMask, CoinDesk, Cryptonomist, FXStreet, CryptoQuant, Farside Investors, The Coin Republic and CoinGabbar reporting.
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