Ethereum (ETH) price has witnessed one of the worst Q1 performances in the first three months of 2025, with the token marking a drop of 46% during the period. With this, ETH has also become the second largest “loser crypto asset” for Q1 2025, among the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
Historically, the price of ETH has performed exceedingly well in the first quarter of the respective year, except for 2018’s drop, at the time when the whole crypto market crashed. Now the current year’s Q1 performance of ETH marks a significant turn with it potentially closing near the price mark of $1,800 today.
Data from CryptoRank shows that ETH witnessed a 43.6% drop in its price during the first quarter of 2025—which is merely 1.2% from its worst performing Q1 of 2018, where it dropped 47.5% and closed at the $396.46 price mark.
Given the serious issues Ethereum has faced in the past few years, including scalability issues, high gas fees, and increased competition from Solana and other blockchain networks, In addition to these challenges, bearish market sentiment has hammered ETH, leading to increased selling pressure in the crypto market throughout March.
Key Factors Behind ETH Price Movements in Q1 2025
ETH price has been influenced by a number of factors in Q1 2025, ranging from President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the announcement of a strategic crypto reserve, the high-profile Bybit hack and an overall bearish market sentiment.
Each of these events had a significant impact on Ethereum’s market share and how investors viewed the cryptocurrency. We will discuss in detail how ETH price fluctuated due to these events.
Donald Trump’s Crypto Reserve Announcement
U.S. President Donald Trump announced the strategic crypto reserve on March 2, and it sent ETH price skyrocketing even on Sunday. At the time, ETH went up over 25% alongside BTC, SOL, ADA and XRP. This was the time when analysts were expecting ETH to catch up with a strong bullish momentum, but it failed to sustain that range.
Bybit Hack
The infamous Lazarus Group targeted Bybit in one of the high-profile crypto hacks and stole $1.5 billion in ETH from the exchange. Such a huge amount of ETH in the hacker’s control sparked selling pressure in ETH markets as it entered into significant volatility at the time.
Bearish Sentiment
Besides, the overall bearish market sentiment around ETH prevented it to surge past any previous highs. While most of the leading crypto assets have marked new highs in January, ETH has failed to gain with any remarkable movement.
ETH Price Analysis
At the time of writing, ETH price is trading near $1,783—down over 14% in the past 7 days. It has been downtrending steadily since losing key support levels at $2,000 earlier this week.
The 1D chart indicates a potential reversal from the current level, with $1,550 marking the next key support. If ETH price manages to bounce from here, the $2,000 to $2,100 range would be the resistance area, and any pump above $2,100 will lead it to recover past gains while potentially attempting to regain levels above the $3,000 price mark.
What’s Next For ETH?
The next few months will be crucial for ETH as it digests the drastic drop below $1,800 and tries to surge. While the crypto market is currently going through a cooled-down period, analysts are now not expecting ETH price to show any sharp increase or decline, but a steady recovery is in the play as the market looks oversold.
As the Pectra upgrade is scheduled to go live in April and it is seen as a bullish catalyst for Ethereum, the second quarter of this year might turn out to be game changing for ETH price.
Also read: Crypto Market Stumbles Amid Tariff Threats, Inflation Fears
