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Taking an ETH Short: My Plan, the Levels, and Why Ethereum Keeps Bleeding vs Bitcoin

June 22, 2026
My ETH short

Greetings from Monterrey.

I am still deep in the World Cup bubble, and honestly, I am not mad about it.

The fever down here is on another level. You feel it in the streets. The bars are buzzing with it. Even the taxi rides carry it.

I have tickets for a match here on June 30th. So I am locked in until then.

Will I travel somewhere in the week in between? Not sure yet. Part of me wants to explore. Part of me just wants to soak this up where I am.

Anyway, enough about the football.

In my last blog I told you I was long BTC and HYPE. I will update you on both of those further down. There is a small lesson in how I handled them.

But today the main course is different.

Today we talk about the ETH short I just took. We go over my plan. And we walk through some structure levels that actually matter.

Let’s get into it.


Why I am looking at an ETH short right now

Let me give you the quick picture first.

Ethereum has been weak. Not just weak in dollars. Weak against Bitcoin too.

That second part is the one most beginners miss. So let me explain it simply.

ETH is trading around $1,720 as I write this. It has been chopping between roughly $1,650 and $1,800 for most of the month.

A couple weeks back it wicked all the way down to $1,520 before bouncing. That tells you sellers are in control on the dips.

Here is the kicker. Ethereum is on track for its first ever three red quarters in a row.

That is not a small thing. The sentiment around ETH is in the gutter right now.


The ETH vs BTC story (this is the important part)

When I size up an ETH short, I do not just look at the dollar chart. I look at the ETH/BTC ratio.

What is that?

It is simply the price of ETH measured in Bitcoin. It strips out the noise of the whole market moving together.

When the ratio goes up, ETH is beating BTC. When it goes down, Bitcoin is winning.

Right now the ratio sits near 0.027. That is a 10-month low.

To put that in context, the 2021 peak was around 0.088. We are nowhere near that. We are back at early-2023 levels.

So Bitcoin has been eating Ethereum’s lunch all year. ETH is down somewhere around 32 to 40 percent in 2026. Bitcoin is down far less.

Why is ETH the weaker one? A few reasons stack up.

It trades more like a tech stock, so it bleeds harder when markets get nervous. Its ETF flows have been softer than Bitcoin’s. There is no big corporate buyer mopping up supply the way there is for BTC. Layer-2 networks keep eating into Ethereum’s fees. And its big Glamsterdam upgrade got pushed back, which killed the short-term hype catalyst.

Put it together and you get an asset that keeps making lower lows against Bitcoin.

That backdrop is why a short interests me more than a long here.


How to trade in extreme fear

The structure levels I am watching

Now the levels. This is where you should be paying attention.

I keep it simple with support and resistance. If that phrase is new to you, go read my support and resistance guide first. It will make this section click.

Support sits around $1,650 to $1,668.

That zone is also where the 200-day moving average lives. Think of it as the line in the sand between bullish and bearish. Lose it cleanly, and the next stops are $1,620, then that $1,520 wick.

Resistance starts at $1,760.

Above that you have $1,800. Then the big psychological wall at $2,000.

For a real trend change, the bar is high. The ratio would need a weekly close above 0.030. And ETH would need to reclaim $2,510 on the monthly.

Neither is close right now. So until that happens, I treat this as a downtrend that bounces. Not a bottom.


ETH 4-hour chart
ETH 4-hour chart on Tradingview

A quick word on the bull case

I am taking a short. But I am not blind to the other side.

Good traders always know the counter-argument. So here it is.

ETH on exchanges is at a 10-year low. Coins are leaving exchanges, which usually means holders are accumulating. One on-chain metric just dropped into a zone that has historically marked bottoms.

There is also a new treasury player building a big ETH stack. And the Glamsterdam upgrade, whenever it lands, is a genuine catalyst.

So this is not a slam dunk. It is a setup with a clear invalidation. That is all any trade ever is.


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My trade

Time for the personal part. Let’s start with the longs.

I closed my BTC and HYPE longs yesterday. On Father’s Day.

I was up a combined 2.7R on the two. A clean result.

Could I have squeezed more? Maybe. But it was Father’s Day. I wanted to be with the kids, not glued to a screen watching candles.

No shame in picking family time over the benjamins. None at all.

And here is the thing. You can always find a new entry the next day. The market is not going anywhere.

So never FOMO on a trade. Missing one setup is fine. Forcing a bad one is not.

Now to the ETH short.

I punted my first short at $1,770. That is the position I am holding now.

I am looking to add if we tap around $1,830. Adding into resistance, not into weakness.

My high-time frame target is $1,460. That is where I would love to cover the bulk.

I might take profit before that, though. Depends how the market behaves on the way down. Targets are a plan, not a promise.

My invalidation is above $1,900. If price closes up there, my bearish idea is wrong and I am out.

So I have room to be patient here. A clear target below. A clear stop above.

One more thing, and please hear me on this.

Do not blindly copy my trade. Copying levels without understanding them is how beginners blow up accounts.

Understand the idea first. Know how the setup formed. Then ask why the invalidation sits where it does.

That is exactly why I built a whole series of trading guides. Study them. Everyone has to start somewhere, and there is no shame in being early in the journey.


Why DCA still matters, even when you trade

Quick note for the longer-term folks reading this.

Trading a short is one thing. But a lot of you are not traders. You are investors. That is totally fine.

This is where DCA comes in. Dollar cost averaging just means buying a fixed amount on a schedule, no matter the price.

It takes the guesswork out. You stop trying to nail the perfect bottom. You stop panicking on red days.

When something is bleeding like ETH is now, DCA lets you build a position slowly. Some buys land high. Some land low. Over time it smooths out.

It is boring. And boring is a feature, not a bug. The flashy trade and the steady DCA plan can live side by side in the same portfolio.


Want my trades in real time?

If you like this kind of breakdown, I share these setups as they happen in my trading newsletter.

Entries, adds, invalidations, the lot. No fluff. Just the trades and the reasoning behind them.

Sign up and follow along. It is free.


Final words

ETH is weak. Both in dollars and against Bitcoin.

That is the simple read. The ratio is near 10-month lows, and the structure points down until proven otherwise.

So I am short from $1,770, eyeing an add near $1,830, targeting $1,460, with invalidation above $1,900.

I also banked 2.7R on my longs and chose my kids over the charts. I would do it again every time.

Trade your own plan. Study the guides. And never FOMO.

See you after the match.

If you enjoyed this blog, check our recent blog about $STRC and why it matters for Bitcoin

As always, don’t forget to claim your bonus on OKX below. See you next time!

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