Ethereum Price Forecast: Short-term holders may not impact ETH's price, Pectra mainnet upgrade set for May 7

Ethereum price today: $1,800

• Ethereum short-term holders' selling pressure may reduce in the coming weeks after scaling down their holdings in March.
• Ethereum developers agreed to ship Pectra on mainnet on May 7.
• ETH could decline to $1,500 if the tested trough at $1,800 fails to hold.

Ethereum (ETH) declined by 3% on Thursday as market participants continued to react to President Donald Trump's announcements regarding reciprocal tariffs. However, the selling pressure may not persist since most ETH short-term holders (STHs) already sold their assets in March.

Short-term holders are less likely to affect price, Pectra mainnet upgrade scheduled for May 7

Following President Trump's "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariff announcements, Ethereum whales depleted their holdings by 380K ETH, causing ETH to further decline in the past 24 hours, per Santiment data.

Despite the decline, the dormant circulation metric, which measures the total number of coins distributed daily based on the last time they changed addresses, showed most investors remained on the sidelines during the event. The metric's downtrend in the past two days indicates that investors across all age cohorts weren't active sellers despite the reciprocal tariffs announcement.

ETH dormant circulation. Source: Santiment

The spikes seen throughout March — stemming majorly from short-term holders — suggest that this investor cohort has already scaled down their holdings in anticipation of the tariffs. Considering STHs are susceptible to selling during market uncertainty, their absence could reduce the downside pressure on ETH.

Meanwhile, in the latest All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call, Ethereum developers shifted the date for the Pectra mainnet upgrade to May 7. A successful mainnet upgrade could alter the sentiment around ETH toward a positive tone.

Pectra will introduce several features to Ethereum, including wallet recovery, transaction batching, sponsored transactions, an increased staking limit of 2,048 ETH and blobspace expansion.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH risks a further decline if $1,800 is taken by the bears

Ethereum is down over 3%, triggering $47.7 million in futures liquidations in the past 24 hours, per Coinglass data. The total amount of liquidated long and short positions accounted for $34.52 million and $13.18 million, respectively.

ETH is testing the $1,800 support on Thursday after seeing a rejection at the $2,070 resistance last week. The decline could send ETH to find support at the $1,500 level in the short term. If the bearish pressure persists, ETH risks a sharp correction to $1,000 — a level last seen during the UST/LUNA crash in 2022.

ETH/USDT daily chart

The Stochastic Oscillator (Stoch) is in its oversold region, while the Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram bars are on the verge of flipping bearish, indicating dominant bearish momentum.

A firm recovery of the $1,800 support will invalidate the thesis and potentially send ETH to retest the resistance at $2,070.