Compass Investments

– A transfer of funds from Wintermute does not necessarily indicate an impending sell-off.

This firm, one of the leading market makers in the cryptocurrency space, regularly engages in two-way asset management across multiple exchanges, and such transfers may be related to the reallocation of holdings, client transactions, or futures hedgingnot just targeted sales.

Only the scale and timing can be reliably determined: this coincided with the release of U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, when the ETH price briefly hit a daily high of $2,667 before quickly reversing course.

This drop significantly impacted margin positions. Over the course of the day, $758.02 million worth of positions were liquidated in the derivatives markets, of which $307.48 million was in Ether.

According to CoinGlass data on liquidations, during a four-hour window around Wintermutes transfers, 92% of forced liquidations were on long positions totaling $126.99 million, while short positions accounted for only $10.23 million. LINE_BREAK CoinGlass data on liquidity distribution highlights key risk levels: a drop below $2,417 could trigger the liquidation of approximately $1.123 billion in long positions, while a rise above $2,669 could trigger the liquidation of approximately $844 million in short positions.

Institutional inflows remained steady during the same period. BlackRocks ETHA fund purchased $13.9 million worth of ETH during this session, bringing its total volume over 20 trading days to $251.4 million.

Techgaged observed a similar struggle earlier this year, when large ETH wallets continued to actively accumulate coins despite short-term volatility pushing leveraged traders out of the market.

On September 12, 2026, ETH was trading at $2,529.68, up 2.9% for the week. The chart shows the dynamics of this entire episode.

ETHUSD weekly chart. CoinGecko.

The price remained within the $2,450$2,500 range for most of the week, dipping to $2,400 around September 1011, then surged to $2,630, before returning to $2,529.68.

Techgaged also analyzed the year-over-year reduction in the networks supply, noting that about half of all ETH is stakedas a result, large positions have a greater impact than they would with more freely available liquidity.

The FOMC meeting on September 16 will be the next significant event, and ETHs behavior in the liquidation zones at $2,417 and $2,669 leading up to that point will likely determine whether the current volatility will lead to a genuine breakout or prove to be yet another failed attempt to overcome resistance.”,”detected_source_language”:”RU