Ethereum is testing resistance as the market finds some relief. The price is at a decision point. And a CryptoQuant analyst has identified a supply structure beneath that resistance that has no precedent in the current cycle — and a clear one in the cycle that preceded it.

The analyst’s data reveals a 57% collapse in Ethereum’s exchange supply: reserves have fallen from approximately 35 million ETH to 14.9 million ETH — a reduction that leaves significantly less ETH available for immediate sale than at any comparable point during the 2020-2021 period. The coins have not disappeared. They have moved into the custody of holders who are not sending them to exchanges to sell.

The inflow data confirms the behavioral picture. Exchange inflows have increased recently — but the scale remains dramatically below the peaks of the 2021-2022 cycle top, when inflows approached the 10 to 20 million ETH range. The current clusters are a fraction of those peaks. Large-scale distribution — the kind that characterized the previous cycle’s top — is not present in the data.

Ethereum testing resistance with 57% less sellable supply than its previous cycle peak, and without the distribution behavior that accompanied that peak, is a structurally different test. The overhead exists. The ammunition to sustain it is historically thin.

Two Signals. One Conclusion

The analyst’s framework rests on the relationship between two independent data points that are currently moving in a configuration that has historically mattered. The first is what has happened to exchange reserves: a 57% collapse that has removed the majority of ETH’s immediately available sell-side supply from the market.

The second is what has not happened to exchange inflows: the extreme deposit spikes — 10 to 20 million ETH ranges — that characterized the 2021-2022 distribution phase have not returned. Holders are not flooding exchanges with ETH to take profit or cut losses at scale.

That combination — supply depleted, distribution absent — describes a market where the structural pressure for downside has been significantly reduced without the structural signal of panic that typically accompanies cycle bottoms at their most acute. The market is not experiencing forced selling at a scale that matches previous major lows. It is experiencing quiet.

The price context adds the final dimension. Ethereum is currently moving near the lows of previous correction ranges — the price levels that, in prior cycles, represented the zone where the risk-reward balance shifted in favor of patient capital rather than continued selling.

The analyst names this carefully: a constructive signal under current conditions. Not a confirmation. Not a guarantee. A structural alignment between depleted supply, absent distribution pressure, and historically significant price levels that, taken together, describes a market where the conditions for recovery are present even if the catalyst has not yet arrived.

Slightly over 3.6 million births have been reported through birth certificates, or about 24,000 fewer than in 2024. The decline seems to confirm predictions by some experts, who doubted a 22,250-birth increase in 2024 marked the start of an upward trend.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its provisional birth data late last week, filling in two months of missing data and offering the first good look at last year’s tally.

The posted numbers account for nearly all of the babies born in 2025, according to the CDC. Data is still being compiled and analyzed, but the final tally might only add “a few thousand additional births,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees birth and death tracking at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

Experts say people are marrying later and also worry about their ability to have the money, health insurance and other resources needed to raise children in a stable environment.

Last year, the Trump administration took steps to encourage more births, like issuing an executive order meant to expand access to and reduce costs of in vitro fertilization and backing the idea of “baby bonuses” that might encourage more couples to have kids.

So far, only the number of births are available — and not birth rates and other information that can give insights into who is having babies.

For example, although births increased in 2024 over the year before, the fertility rate actually fell, noted Karen Guzzo, a family demographer at the University of North Carolina.

The fertility rate is a statistic describing whether each generation has enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. It has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women wait longer to have children or don’t have kids at all.

For 2025, “I wouldn’t expect birth or fertility rates to have risen; I would expect them to fall because childbearing is highly related to economic conditions and uncertainty,” Guzzo said in an email.

Also, most of the births in 2025 would have been children conceived in 2024, when people were worried about affordability and political polarization, she added.

As a general trend, U.S. births and birth rates have been falling for years. They dropped in 2020, then rose for two straight years after that, an increase experts partly attributed to pregnancies put off amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 2% drop in 2023 put U.S. births at fewer than 3.6 million, the lowest one-year tally since 1979.

Hi, you’re listening to ET Markets Radio, I am Neha Vashishth. Welcome to a brand-new episode of ET Market Watch. Let’s quickly get to the top highlights:

Indian markets ended sharply lower on Monday as selling pressure intensified across the board.

The Sensex fell 610 points, while the Nifty slipped below the 26,000 mark, as investors booked profits in small- and mid-caps and extended selling to heavyweight stocks.

So, what’s driving the fall?
Here are the five key factors.

First, caution ahead of the US Federal Reserve’s policy decision on December 10. While a rate cut is expected, uncertainty around the outcome has pushed investors to reduce risk.

Second, persistent FII outflows continue to weigh on sentiment. Foreign investors have sold over ₹6,500 crore so far in December, pressuring equities despite strong domestic buying.

Third, the rupee hovering near record lows has rattled markets. A weaker currency raises import costs and inflation risks, adding stress to already fragile sentiment.

Fourth, uncertainty around the India–US trade deal remains. While talks are ongoing, lack of clarity is keeping investors cautious.

And finally, rising Japanese government bond yields are raising fears of a yen carry trade unwind, a move that could trigger fresh volatility across emerging markets, including India.

Bottom line: Global uncertainty, currency pressure and foreign fund selling are keeping markets on edge.

That’s all for this episode, see you in the next one.

In October, 53% of homes saw their “Zestimates” decline, the most since 2012 and up from just 16% a year earlier. Losses were most widespread in the West and South.

In fact, those regions have housing markets where nearly all homes declined in value over the last year. Denver topped the list with 91%, followed by Austin (89%), Sacramento (88%), Phoenix (87%) and Dallas (87%).

The Northeast and Midwest, by contrast, have largely avoided such losses, but declines are spreading to more homes in all metros, Zillow said.

In addition, most homes also dropped from their peak valuations, with the average drawdown hitting 9.7%. While that has soared from 3.5% in the spring of 2022, it’s still well below the 27% average drawdown in early 2012.

To be sure, lower home values are just losses on paper and aren’t realized by homeowners unless actual sale prices undercut their initial purchase prices.

By that score, homeowners are still ahead as Zillow data shows that values are up a median 67% since the last sale, and just 4.1% of homes have lost value since their last sale.

“Homeowners may feel rattled when they see their Zestimate drop, and it’s more common in today’s cooler market environment than in recent years. But relatively few are selling at a loss,” Treh Manhertz, senior economic researcher at Zillow, said in a statement. “Home values surged over the past six years, and the vast majority of homeowners still have significant equity. What we’re seeing now is a normalization, not a crash.”

Zillow

The lower values come as the housing market has been frozen for much of the past three years after rate hikes from the Federal Reserve in 2022 and 2023 sent borrowing costs higher, discouraging homeowners from giving up their existing ultra-low mortgage rates.

But the dearth of new supply kept home prices high, shutting out many would-be homebuyers who were also balking at elevated mortgage rates.

With demand weak, the housing market has been shifting away from sellers and toward buyers. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that delistings soared this year as sellers become fed up with offers coming in below asking prices and just take their homes off the market.

But the National Association of Realtors sees a turnaround coming next year. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun predicted earlier this month existing-home sales will jump 14% in 2026 after three years of stagnation, with new-home sales rising 5%. Those sales will support a 4% uptick in home prices.

“Next year is really the year that we will see a measurable increase in sales,” Yun said at a conference on Nov. 14. “Home prices nationwide are in no danger of declining.”

There were 30,000 fewer U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2024 than the year before — the largest one-year decline ever recorded. An estimated 80,000 people died from overdoses last year, according to provisional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data released Wednesday. That’s down 27% from 110,000 in 2023.

Still, annual overdose deaths are higher than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a statement, the CDC noted that overdoses are still the leading cause of death for people 18-44 years old, “underscoring the need for ongoing efforts to maintain this progress.”

Some experts worry the recent decline could be slowed or stopped by reductions in federal funding and the public health workforce, or a shift away from the strategies that seem to be working.

“Now is not the time to take the foot off the gas pedal,” said Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a drug policy expert at the University of California, San Francisco.

The CDC has been collecting comparable data for 45 years. The previous largest one-year drop was 4% in 2018, according to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics.

All but two states saw declines last year — with some of the biggest in Ohio, West Virginia and other states that have been hard-hit in the nation’s decades-long overdose epidemic. Experts say more research needs to be done to understand what drove the reduction, but they mention several possible factors. Among the most cited:

• Increased availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone.
• Expanded addiction treatment.
• Shifts in how people use drugs.
• The growing impact of billions of dollars in opioid lawsuit settlement money.
• The number of at-risk Americans is shrinking, after waves of deaths in older adults and a shift in teens and younger adults away from the drugs that cause most deaths.

The provisional numbers are estimates of everyone who died of overdoses in the U.S., including noncitizens. That data is still being processed, and the final numbers can sometimes differ a bit. But it’s clear that there was a huge drop last year.

A CDC report late last year showed that overdose deaths in the U.S. fell 17% between July 2023 and July 2024 — credited in part to wider naloxone access. Naloxone, also sold under the brand name Narcan, was made available for over-the-counter purchase in 2023 and is standard for first responders to carry. It’s even popped up in some classrooms.   

The Trump administration has proposed cutting a $56 million grant that teaches first responders how to use the lifesaving overdose reversal drug naloxone, which experts have previously said could reverse progress the U.S. has made in lowering opioid overdose deaths. 

The grant money can be used by state and local organizations for training people on how to use naloxone, as well as administering and distributing the medication. The grant is administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 

Experts note that there have been past moments when U.S. overdose deaths seemed to have plateaued or even started to go down, only to rise again. That happened in 2018.

But there are reasons to be optimistic.

Drug manufacturers, distributors, pharmacy chains and other businesses have settled lawsuits with state and local governments over the painkillers that were a main driver of overdose deaths in the past. The deals over the last decade or so have promised about $50 billion over time, with most of it required to be used to fight addiction.

Another settlement that would be among the largest, with members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma agreeing to pay up to $7 billion, could be approved this year.

The money, along with federal taxpayer funding, is going to a variety of programs, including supportive housing and harm reduction efforts, such as providing materials to test drugs for fentanyl, the biggest driver of overdoses now.

But what each state will do with that money is currently at issue. “States can either say, ‘We won, we can walk away'” in the wake of the declines or they can use the lawsuit money on naloxone and other efforts, said Regina LaBelle, a former acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. She now heads an addiction and public policy program at Georgetown University.

President Donald Trump’s administration views opioids as largely a law enforcement issue and as a reason to step up border security. That worries many public health leaders and advocates.

“We believe that taking a public health approach that seeks to support — not punish — people who use drugs is crucial to ending the overdose crisis,” said Dr. Tamara Olt, an Illinois woman whose 16-year-old son died of a heroin overdose in 2012. She is now executive director of Broken No Moore, an advocacy organization focused on substance use disorder.

Olt attributes recent declines to the growing availability of naloxone, work to make treatment available, and wider awareness of the problem.

Kerry Breen

contributed to this report.