Ethereum under pressure — bearish patterns, heavy ETF outflows and liquidation risk

Ethereum (ETH) has come under renewed selling pressure as broad crypto market weakness and macro risks drove a series of liquidations and ETF redemptions. Price fell over 6% on Feb. 23, trading near $1,855 before stabilising around $1,874, and earlier reports showed a drop to $1,768 in a deeper sell-off. Short-term technicals are negative: daily bearish engulfing candles, a bearish pennant, and a multi-month descending parallel channel point to continued downside; models that respect the channel project a move toward ~$1,450 (breach of the $1,500 psychological level). Funding rates across perpetual futures are deeply negative, signalling dominant short positioning and increasing liquidation risk — CoinGlass and CoinGlass-like trackers reported roughly $108M of ETH long liquidations in 24 hours, while another report noted nearly $2B of ETH position liquidations across a larger crash period. Institutional flows add to the bearish picture: nine spot ETH ETFs have seen consecutive weeks of net outflows (around $1.38B over five weeks in the later report; earlier data showed ~ $149M YTD outflows in U.S. ETFs), indicating weakening institutional demand. On-chain metrics, however, remain relatively resilient: active addresses and transactions have risen, fees climbed, and activity in stablecoins, DeFi and RWA tokenization sectors expanded — a signal of underlying network use despite price weakness. Key takeaways for traders: elevated short-term downside risk (negative technical structure and heavy short funding), high recent liquidation volumes, sustained ETF outflows reducing bid-side institutional demand, and persistent macro volatility. Watch levels: a weekly close above ~$2,130 would support a bullish reversal toward ~ $3,000; a weekly close below $1,768 would likely extend the downtrend and validate lower targets near $1,450. Primary keywords: Ethereum price, ETH, ETF outflows, liquidations, bearish patterns.