Ethereum had one of its most two-sided trading sessions of the quarter on Friday. The token spiked to $2,667, its highest print since late January, on a short squeeze that followed softer-than-expected United States inflation data, before sellers returned and pulled the price back to roughly $2,542 by early evening.
During the same window, market maker Wintermute moved 61,847 ETH, valued at around $160.3 million, onto Binance and Coinbase. The deposits arrived on the two ETH spot books as the squeeze stalled, tightening the link between the on-chain flow and the intraday tape.
The transfer was first flagged by on-chain analytics account Lookonchain at 16:14:47 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on September 11, 2026. The tracker said Wintermute, a London-based algorithmic trading firm and one of the largest liquidity providers in digital assets, had moved the 61,847 ETH from its hot wallet 0xf81..73AA to Binance and Coinbase over the preceding three hours, roughly 13:15 to 16:15 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The wallet tag was verified through blockchain intelligence firm Arkham.
A deposit to a centralized exchange (CEX) is not a confirmed market sell. Coins landing on a CEX from a principal market maker can represent inventory rotation, client settlement, derivatives hedging, or directional spot selling. What is verifiable is the timing of the flow relative to price.
Ether’s Session: From a Gap Down to a Squeeze High and Back
Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, opened Friday near $2,437 after gapping down about 1.2% from Thursday’s close. Morning trading in Europe and the early hours of the New York session stayed heavy as United States macro data approached.
CoinGecko later showed ETH at $2,539.51, up 3.2% on the day, after a 24-hour range of $2,436.69 to $2,647.68, with market cap at $310.004 billion and 24-hour volume at $24.092 billion.
The tape reversed sharply after the Consumer Price Index (CPI) print for August 2026, which came in below consensus and reset expectations for the Federal Reserve’s short-term interest rate path.
In the hour after the release, ETH added more than 5% and touched an intraday high of $2,667 across major venues. The full session range spanned $2,433 to $2,667, an intraday swing of more than $220, or roughly 9.6% from bottom to top.
By late afternoon UTC, the squeeze had exhausted. ETH slipped back under $2,600, then under $2,550, and was trading near $2,541 to $2,545 at 19:17 UTC. That level is still about 4% above Thursday’s close but around $120 below the squeeze high.
Liquidation Heatmap: ETH the Single Largest Block
Data from derivatives tracker CoinGlass shows why the move was violent in both directions. Its 24-hour liquidation heatmap displayed Ether as the single largest asset block on the board at $307.48 million in forced closures, ahead of Bitcoin (BTC) at $211.50 million.
Across the wider market, CoinGlass counted $758.02 million in 24-hour liquidations, and 103,515 traders were wiped out. Shorts accounted for $411.79 million of that total, while longs accounted for $346.22 million.
The single largest order of the day was a $20.28 million ETH-USD wipeout on Hyperliquid, a decentralized perpetual futures exchange that has become one of the busiest venues for high-leverage Ether trading.
The 24-hour split hides the turn in flow that overlaps directly with the Wintermute deposits. In the one-hour window ending 19:17 UTC, total liquidations came in at $7.58 million, split between $6.73 million in longs and $852,610 in shorts, showing longs being flushed in real time.
Zooming out to four hours, the total climbs to $137.22 million, with longs at $126.99 million against just $10.23 million in shorts, or more than 92% of forced closures on the long side. The 12-hour figure of $636.94 million tells a different story, with shorts leading at $369.13 million versus $267.81 million in longs, capturing the earlier squeeze.
Over 24 hours, the total settles at $758.02 million, split $346.22 million longs to $411.79 million shorts, a net short wreck that was gradually being reversed by the time the deposits landed. In plain terms, shorts were the fuel that pushed ETH into the squeeze high, and longs became the fuel on the way down.
Deposit, Rejection, and the Flow That Followed
The connection between the Wintermute inflow and the price rejection is mechanical rather than conclusive. The CPI print produced an initial dip, then a short squeeze in which ETH led all crypto assets on forced buy-side flow. As price approached the $2,662 to $2,667 zone, Wintermute placed $160.3 million of Ether into Binance and Coinbase, raising the sell-side inventory sitting on the two deepest ETH spot books.
Price then failed at the high, and the four-hour liquidation window flipped from short-dominated to long-dominated. ETH gave back more than half of the squeeze without losing its green daily close.
The deposit size is large relative to a typical hour of ETH spot flow, but it is smaller than the $307.48 million of ETH liquidations already forced through perpetual futures during the session. Derivatives inflicted more damage on the tape than the wallet transfer can be proven to have caused.
Wintermute has a documented pattern of large CEX deposits that later look like inventory rotation or hedge management rather than directional selling, and the firm has previously been visible on both sides of the Ether book on centralised and decentralised venues, including Hyperliquid. Friday’s 61,847 ETH movement is context for the day, not by itself a verdict on where the price goes next.
Levels That Now Matter
Attention turns to the two liquidation clusters that would extend Friday’s two-sided flush into a second-leg move. Citing CoinGlass data circulated after the pullback, a break below $2,417 would put roughly $1.123 billion in long liquidation intensity within reach on major centralised exchanges, while a break back above $2,669 would put approximately $844 million in short intensity in play.
Between those two lines, price action is expected to remain choppy, with derivatives positioning rebuilding after the day’s flush.
As of the time of writing, ETH is holding the mid-$2,540s, up on the day, off the intraday high, and sitting between those two clusters. The Wintermute coins are now on exchange. Whether they become live offers, hedges against a perpetuals book, or unused inventory is the part on-chain data cannot show yet, and it is the variable that traders will watch into the Asia session open.
Also Read: Ethereum Price Today: ETH Reclaims $2,600 After August CPI as Fed Rate Decision Looms
