Ethereum is currently struggling to consistently break past the significant psychological threshold of $2,000. Each effort to achieve this has met with rejection and retracement.

Analyst Ali Martinez recently analyzed Ethereum’s recent trajectory and noted that the cryptocurrency is creating a bullish flag. However, he mentioned a critical cautionary detail which could point to potential downward trends for ETH.

“Ethereum $ETH is forming a bullish flag!”
“There’s just one twist… The chart is inverted.See Image*” - Ali Charts (@alicharts, February 20, 2026)

This inverted bullish flag suggests that ETH has been in a long-standing downtrend for several weeks, although it has recently stayed within a narrower price range. Martinez, however, anticipates a significant move might happen soon, potentially driving the price to new local lows beneath $1,400.

Furthermore, Daan Crypto Trades remarked that Ethereum’s performance has notably lagged, remarking that the onset of 2026 has been less favorable compared to its trajectory in early 2025.

Martinez expressed a glimmer of hope, forecasting that the largest altcoin may rebound in the upcoming months, as history indicates that the period from March to May usually tends to be beneficial for Ethereum.

“$ETH has started the year off worse than last year. Historically, March through May are good months for ETH. However, the market has been unpredictable recently with almost no correlation to other risk assets.” - Daan Crypto Trades (@DaanCrypto, February 21, 2026)

Additionally, there has been a notable negative trend with regard to net flows in spot ETH ETFs, which registered a loss of about $113 million last week. Conversely, BitMine, under the leadership of Tom Lee, continues to build its ETH holdings; the company acquired 45,759 ETH last week, totaling 4,371,497 tokens or nearly $8.7 billion in value, despite experiencing a loss of $8 billion based on their average purchasing cost of $3,820.