As small traders sold off their Ethereum positions, the large ones preferred to buy them for cheap.

At least that is what the latest Santiment charts showed. The trading sentiment tool found that the number of wallets holding between 1,000 and 10,000 surged, while Ethereum prices were going down.

Santiment data shows the number of "whales" is on the rise as ETH/USD plunges

The cross-referencable data pointed towards accumulation behavior among traders with higher capital exposure in the Ethereum market. They purchased ETH positions when the asset was trading at its weekly low, an act that suggested their underlying bullishness towards the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Ali Martinez, an on-chain analyst who first spotted the whale accumulation, commented:

“Santiment’s holder distribution chart shows that as Ethereum was falling, there was a spike in the number of addresses with millions of dollars in ETH, colloquially known as whales. Roughly 68 new whales holding 1K to 10K $ETH have joined the network in the past 3 days.“

Ethereum Price Action

The ETH/USD exchange rate was down 6.82 percent ahead of the New York opening bell, trading at circa $328.

Ethereum price is continuing its downside move on Monday. Source: TradingView.com

The downside move came in contrast with a strong upside recovery yesterday, wherein ETH/USD printed  5.23 percent gains. The flipflop sentiment showed that Ethereum traders are unable to establish a short-term bias for now.

Instead, they watched two key areas to keep their positions intra-range. The first one is below $364 that saw higher selling pressure from daytraders. Meanwhile, the area between $300-324 served as support, a range where traders opened their long positions – spot or derivative.

That practically left Ethereum inside a rough $50 price range. Traders opened short positions at resistance with targets towards support – and they entered long ones at support to target resistance levels. As usual, even those 63 whales Santiment spotted were not enough to establish a bias.

“This price action is pathetic and the worst traders I know are calling bottoms,” said a pseudonymous analyst. “All the signs for proper cleaning. Buying your $ETH $230 down to $100.”

That is true if ETH fails to surge above its crucial resistance levels at $360 and $370. Meanwhile, initial support at $335 already stands broken to the downside.

So far, the whale accumulation has not translated into a rebound. If the situation persists, ETH/USD risks plunging lower to the levels below $250.