Ethereum price drops on Jan. 19 as selling pressure accelerates: what is behind it?

Ethereum price is down while daily transactions now exceed 2021 peaks as cheap L2 data, stablecoin payments, and rising staking queues signal durable, non-speculative network demand.

Ethereum (ETH) price is down, while daily transaction count has climbed above the peaks of the 2021 bull cycle even as users pay some of the lowest average fees seen in recent years.

Data from Etherscan shows that daily transactions have risen from around 1.8 million to 2.1 million over the past two weeks, a roughly 14% increase. At the same time, average fees have dropped to a fraction of their long‑term norms, helped by changes that make it cheaper for Layer 2 networks to post data back to mainnet.

Ethereum is trading around 3,210 USD, down roughly 3–3.5% over the past 24 hours.

Those metrics matter because they suggest that usage is broad, not just speculative. Much of the activity is driven by payments, especially stablecoin transfers, rather than short‑lived DeFi manias. According to the piece, Tether’s USDT currently handles roughly double the transfer volume of Circle’s USDC on Ethereum, underscoring USDT’s dominance in day‑to‑day on‑chain settlement.

Scaling architecture and what’s driving usage

Ethereum’s “modular scaling architecture” for enabling the unusual combo of rising throughput and falling costs. Dosh, head of business development and growth at open‑source explorer Blockscout, told Decrypt that this trend “reflects the success of Ethereum’s modular scaling architecture, particularly EIP‑4844 and its recent blob‑capacity upgrade, which allows Layer 2s to post more data to mainnet at far lower cost.” Those upgrades moved much of the heavy data load off the core chain while keeping it verifiable, improving efficiency without sacrificing security.​

Dosh added that most current usage is coming from “stablecoin transfers and payments, led by Tether’s USDT at roughly twice the volume of Circle’s USDC.” With gas prices still low, they argued, “this activity appears highly durable, aligning with the broader trend of mainstream payment integrations expanding across Ethereum‑based rails.” In other words, Ethereum is quietly becoming the back‑end of a growing number of payment and settlement workflows, rather than a venue purely for speculative trading.​

Staking, validator behavior, and network confidence

Under the hood, the network’s proof‑of‑stake layer is also signaling confidence rather than stress. Roughly 30% of all Ether is now staked, according to Ethereum Validator Queue data citing the Beacon Chain. Crucially, the validator exit queue has dropped to zero, meaning there are currently no stakers lined up to withdraw their funds—a sharp reversal from a peak of about 2.67 million ETH queued to exit in September 2025.​

On the other side of the ledger, around 2.6 million ETH is waiting to enter staking, the highest level since July 2023. “Virtually no validator exits suggest a balance between operating costs and staking rewards, a sign of stability and confidence,” Dosh said. In their view, the lack of exits implies “that stakers are accumulating rather than exiting, keeping capital committed and liquid for future flexibility in higher‑volatility environments.”​

Vitalik Buterin’s warning on ‘bloat’

This stability and growth come with a caveat from Ethereum’s most influential voice. Co‑founder Vitalik Buterin used a weekend post on X to warn that the network’s long‑term health depends on resisting protocol bloat. “One of my fears with Ethereum protocol development,” he wrote, “is that we can be too eager to add new features to meet highly specific needs, even if those features bloat the protocol or add entire new types of interacting components or complicated cryptography as critical dependencies.”​

Dosh framed that intervention as a “governance concern,” arguing that “every mature software system accumulates some complexity, and Ethereum is no different.” While this so‑called bloat “doesn’t hinder current performance, it makes continued optimization essential,” they said. In their words, the data now proves Ethereum can “scale sustainably”—but that means the protocol “must also simplify sustainably to preserve long‑term resilience and agility.”