Ethereum's final sprint: Can it break the most embarrassing annual record since 2018

The Edge of Repeating History

According to on-chain analyst Ted Pillows, Ethereum is facing an extremely rare historical milestone. If Ethereum closes December with a decline, it will mean that there have been three full quarters of poor performance throughout 2025 — a situation that has only occurred once in the past decade, during the 2018 bear market.

This comparison is particularly striking because just a few months ago, Ethereum broke the $4,000 threshold in August, when the market widely expected the price to continue pushing toward $5,000. However, reality delivered a loud slap — since mid-December, Ethereum has been in a sustained downtrend, failing to hold the $3,000 support level.

Price Dilemma and Worsening Market Sentiment

As of the latest data, Ethereum’s trading price is $3,150, with a 24-hour increase of 1.94%, but this is not enough to change the market’s pessimistic outlook. The 24-hour trading volume is only $39.394 billion, a significant decrease compared to previous periods, reflecting a severe lack of market participation. The price has been oscillating within a narrow range of $3,090 to $3,170, with traders’ confidence in the direction nearly zero.

Notably, over the past decade, Ethereum’s average performance in December has exceeded 5% gains. In 2017, it reached a historic high of 70%, making the current predicament even more ironic. According to CryptoRank data, even achieving a 5.79% increase would require Ethereum to reverse course in a very short period, and this probability is rapidly diminishing.

The Dangerous Signal of Whale Exit

The worsening market sentiment is not without reason. A series of recent actions by “big players” are deepening investor concerns.

A wallet that had been dormant for nine years — reportedly linked to well-known figure Erik Voorhees — suddenly sold approximately $13.42 million worth of ETH positions on the market. More notably, Samson Mow, CEO of JAN3, recently completely cleared all his Ethereum holdings from Bitmine. The deeper implication of Mow’s move is that it not only signifies a shift in personal investment decisions but also reflects a clear weakening of confidence among some crypto leaders in Ethereum’s prospects — they have already concentrated strategic bets on Bitcoin.

Such large-scale exits by whales often trigger chain reactions, further depressing market sentiment and causing retail investors to panic.

Time Is Running Out

If Ethereum wants to rewrite this embarrassing chapter in its history, it has less than 96 hours left. In such a tense countdown, breaking through seems particularly difficult.

Despite the bleak situation, optimistic voices still exist in the market. Most community participants believe that even if 2025 becomes a “failed year,” 2026 is likely to see a strong rebound. This cyclical recovery ability may be the key to the entire crypto market surviving in extreme pessimism.

The end of a year is already set, but the market’s story is far from over.