Ether (ETH) dropped to $1,814 on Wednesday, its lowest in over 14 weeks, raising concerns about whether the ETH/USD pair can stabilize above key liquidity zones near its multi-year lows at $1,800. 

ETH/USD 1-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Key takeaways:

• Ether fell to a 14-week low near $1,800, with traders warning a breakdown could trigger deeper losses toward $1,200-$1,600.
• The Coinbase Premium Index hit its lowest level since February, signaling persistent weakness in US spot demand.
• Spot Ethereum ETFs logged sixteen straight days of outflows.

Ether sits on weak support at $1,800

Ether’s technical structure has weakened after losing support at $2,000 and $2,200. Note that all the major moving averages lie within this zone on the daily chart.

Today, ETH traded as low as $1,814 on Bitstamp, while the daily relative strength index (RSI) fell to 25, its lowest level since Feb. 6, highlighting strong downside pressure and oversold conditions. 

Related: Bitmine buys $52M ETH as Tom Lee says price not yet showing Ethereum’s strength

However, this might also mean that the sellers are losing momentum, suggesting a possible price rebound from current levels, akin to the 39% rebound seen in February.

ETH/USD daily chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Traders say Ether’s bullishness hinges on the ETH/USD pair holding above the crucial $1,800 support.

“$ETH almost tapped the $1,800 level today,” analyst Ted Pillows said in a Wednesday post on X, adding:

“This is the last support zone for Ethereum before new lows.”

An accompanying chart revealed that a break below $1,800 would bring areas below $1,700 into the picture.

ETH/USD daily chart. Source: X/Ted Pillows

Additionally, fellow analyst CrypDoMillions said losing $1,800 would send ETH price lower toward $1,600.

ETH/USD daily chart. Source: X/CrypDoMillions

Not all traders had confidence in Ether’s ability to remain above $1,800, with analyst BitFrog saying that “$ETH is on life support” at current levels, adding:

“Bulls better wake up fast. $1,800 looks shaky, honestly.”

The Entity-Adjusted UTXO Realized Price Distribution (URPD) metric, showing at which prices the current set of ETH UTXOs were created, shows that ETH trades above a relatively open zone between $1,800 and $1,250, where there’s less demand.

This means ETH may move more into this range if the sell-off continues, with the downside possibly capped at $1,200. This is where investors acquired more than 1.4 million ETH.

ETH: Entity-Adjusted URPD. Source: Glassnode

Meanwhile, Ether’s cost-basis distribution heatmap shows weak accumulation between $1,200 and $1,800, suggesting a potential pathway toward the lower zone in the short term.

Ether’s Coinbase Premium falls to February levels 

The Ethereum Coinbase Premium Index, which tracks the price difference between ETH on Coinbase and Binance, dropped to -0.16 on May 28, before recovering to -0.13.

A deeply negative premium confirms that the selling pressure is originating from US entities. The last time the metric was this negative was during the early February sell-off when ETH price dropped to multi-year lows at $1,750.

Historically, extreme negative premiums often coincided with capitulation phases, as seen in April 2025 and during the 2022 bear market.

This implies that as long as US investors sell at a discount compared to the global market, the bears remain in control.

Ethereum Coinbase Premium Index. Source: CryptoQuant

“Coinbase Premium has fallen into a notable discount, signaling potential weakness in spot demand,” crypto investor and trader Thomas The Trader said in an X post on Tuesday.

“ETH Coinbase Premium just reached its lowest point since February,” analyst Inoms said in a Monday X post, adding:

“The message is clear: US demand is still weak.”

Weak US demand is also evidenced by heavy outflows from US-based spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These ETFs have posted outflows for sixteen consecutive days, the longest losing streak since March 2025. 

Investors have withdrawn nearly $847.2 million from these investment products over this period, according to data from SoSoValue.

Spot Ethereum ETFs flows chart. Source: SoSoValue

Coupled with more than $257.3 million in outflows from global Ethereum investment products last week, this points to institutional selling, which will likely continue to put pressure on the price in the near term.

[Update (June 3 at 8:01 pm UTC): This article has been updated to include a response from Fairshake in the fourth paragraph.]

Democratic and Republican candidates across California, New Jersey and South Dakota won their respective primaries on Tuesday after being the beneficiaries of supportive ads purchased by cryptocurrency industry-backed political action committees (PACs).

On Tuesday, Democrats Jacqui Irwin, Ted Lieu, Zoe Lofgren, Dave Min, Mike McGuire, Hilda Solis, George Whitesides, Lou Correa and Lateefah Simon won their respective California primaries for House seats. Democrat Rob Menendez and Republican Mike Rounds also won primaries for New Jersey’s 8th congressional district and a South Dakota Senate seat, respectively.

Selection of results after Tuesday’s primaries for California House seats. Source: CalMatters

The political wins came after the Protect Progress and Defend American Jobs PACs spent about a combined $3.5 million on media to support the candidates. The groups are affiliated with Fairshake, a political action committee funded largely by cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and Ripple Labs that reported having a war chest of $193 million in January.

“America needs members of Congress who will act to lay out responsible guardrails for the community to maintain our global leadership,” Fairshake spokesperson Geoff Vetter told Cointelegraph.

The PAC spending came on the heels of similar buys for supportive media in Texas runoff primaries last week, which resulted in Democrat Christian Menefee defeating incumbent US Representative Al Green, and four Republican candidates winning primaries in smaller House districts. Many of the candidates in the state races have supported advancing digital assets, either through voting on “pro-crypto” legislation while in office like the GENIUS Act or in public statements.

Related: PACs laud Texas primary wins, look to back more pro-crypto candidates

Maryland is shaping up to be the next focus for Fairshake and its affiliates. Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings showed Protect Progress had spent more than $3.1 million as of Wednesday to support Democratic candidate Adrian Boafo in Maryland’s 5th Congressional district, which is scheduled to hold a primary on June 23.

Crypto advocacy organizations back new developer-focused PAC

On Wednesday, industry leaders announced the launch of Defend Developers, a hybrid PAC that will support “incumbent members of Congress who actively champion developer protections and crypto builders.” According to the group, Defend Developers’ board of directors includes “CEOs, CLOs, and policy leaders at top crypto organizations, including DeFi Education Fund, Orca Creative, Solana Policy Institute, and Uniswap Labs.”

“For too long, developers building decentralized technologies have faced regulatory uncertainty and enforcement actions instead of clear rules and guidelines,” said the PAC’s founder, Gavin Zavatone. “While legislation and rulemakings are being written as we speak, for some policymakers there is limited incentive to understand the fundamental nature of software development.”

No official data available on Defend Developers as of Wednesday. Source: FEC

The FEC portal did not show any funding or expenditure activity, as of Wednesday. Nick Stoltzfus, co-CEO of on-chain student loan digital asset platform Stratofied, was listed as treasurer and custodian of records in the PAC’s statement of organization on May 15.

The PAC did not say where or how it would focus its efforts as part of the 2026 US midterms other than “key races across the country.” Cointelegraph reached out to Defend Developers for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Magazine: Korea’s first memecoin rug-pull case, China’s crypto rules review: Asia Express

Meta has come up with an artificial intelligence business agent that helps companies deal with customers on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. They made this announcement at the Meta Conversations event in London. This is a step for Meta into the artificial intelligence market for businesses.

The Meta Business Agent is a tool that does more than just answer questions like a robot. It lets businesses do things like book appointments, answer customer questions, make sales and take payments within a conversation. Meta says this system will help companies streamline tasks and provide better service to their customers. The Meta Business Agent is primarily about making things easier for companies and their customers on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.

From Customer Support to Full Business Operations

Meta says that more than one million businesses have used its AI customer service tools on WhatsApp and Messenger. Now Meta has a version of these tools that can do more than answer questions.

The AI tool can help businesses find people who want to buy, suggest products to customers, set up meetings and help complete purchases. Meta is also testing features that help business owners see what people are talking about in chats, understand customers better and figure out how to run their businesses. Someday Meta may add tools to help businesses learn more about the market and integrate with business software.

WhatsApp Becomes a Bigger Revenue Driver

This development shows that Meta wants to make money from WhatsApp. WhatsApp has not generated as much revenue as Facebook and Instagram, but more businesses—especially medium-sized companies around the world—are using it to talk to customers.

Meta plans to make this AI tool available to businesses. At first it will be free; later, businesses will likely pay to use it. Meta is working with companies like Shopify and Zendesk to help businesses use the AI tool with the software they already use. Meta’s AI tool will gain capabilities through these integrations.

Growing Competition in Enterprise AI

Meta is now competing with companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, all of which are building AI tools for businesses. Meta believes it has an advantage because of its large user bases on WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, which could help attract companies that want to use AI to engage customers.

Conclusion

Meta’s new artificial intelligence tool for businesses aims to make WhatsApp more than a messaging app and turn it into a platform for customer support, sales, bookings and payments in one place. Meta wants to be a player in the enterprise AI market, and many businesses are likely to try the tool.

However, concerns remain about AI security, privacy and reliability. These issues will need to be addressed as businesses increasingly adopt automated AI tools.

At some point, the progress of the crypto sector’s top policy priority — the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act — becomes an insurmountable math problem, with not enough time left in the U.S. Senate’s work calendar to allow for passage. But the bill has now been formally offered for the Senate calendar, and the industry’s lobbyists are still shooting for a last-moment win.

There are about eight weeks of floor time available in the Senate before the lawmakers scatter for the summer break and the political demands of the midterm congressional elections. And as the election season grows more urgent, the appetite for legislative cooperation could also take a hit.

In that brief work window in Congress’ upper chamber, the Clarity Act would need to go through several procedural steps that can only begin once the market structure bill is finalized — a goal that still requires some big-ticket disputes to get ironed out between the political parties and the White House.

The Clarity Act would establish a tailored regulatory regime for crypto in the U.S. — an idea that carries significant bipartisan support. But even if the bill were ready for action, a significant array of Senate business items are competing for time and attention. And some of them haven’t been going very well.

A deadline is looming this month for extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and getting a long-term deal on U.S. spy powers has been a challenge, including over the insertion of a ban on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Senate leadership had warned that the CBDC component could kill the effort in that chamber, and an impasse had set in between the House of Representatives and Senate that’s still being resolved, but the latest version of the bill reportedly includes a temporary ban that ends in three years.

Even more fireworks, though, had erupted from the process to approve an immigration-enforcement funding bill. The spending plan was derailed by an internal outcry from Republicans opposing President Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion Department of Justice “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate allies. A court ordered the plan halted during the dispute over its legality, and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly gave in to the pressure on Tuesday to assure lawmakers that the idea is dead, which is expected to re-open the path for the immigration bill.

Must-pass bills

Those two bills — FISA and immigration — must pass in order for aspects of the federal government to continue functioning, giving them priority over other work. Crypto lobbyists are expressing quiet confidence that they’ll be resolved soon.

But once they’re approved, that doesn’t necessarily mean smooth sailing for the crypto bill, which was formally forwarded to the Senate calendar this week.

Adding some potential drama has been President Trump’s insistence that one of the legislative efforts — FISA or a bill overhauling U.S. housing regulations — be saddled with his effort to impose voter identification and proof of citizenship at the polls before the congressional midterm elections, which he has said will lead to his impeachment if Democrats win. Adding that controversial bill atop another would sharply decrease the odds of its host bill’s passage, but Trump has previously threatened to halt congressional progress on other matters if lawmakers don’t make it happen.

That housing bill he’s looking at may be among the Clarity Act’s big competitors for floor time. The bipartisan legislation to encourage U.S. home building (while also restricting certain institutional investors) has been lobbed back and forth by the House and Senate, but leaders in the two chambers are reportedly working on a version that will satisfy both. Even if it all goes well, the Senate calendar is a zero-sum proposition at this stage, meaning every hour devoted to anything that isn’t Clarity reduces the odds for the chamber having enough bandwidth for the bill.

The Senate is also wrestling with a debate over a war-powers resolution aimed at halting U.S. military action in Iran. And the coming days are also expected to see action on the legislation known as the farm bill that may get a hearing in the Senate Agriculture Committee that’s also supposed to be working on a final version of the Clarity Act, plus potential movement on the National Defense Authorization Act for next year.

Summer plans

Though White House officials had expressed an Independence Day goal for the Clarity Act to clear Congress at the start of next month, various lawmakers have suggested end-of-July timing or even early August — the final week before the start of the long congressional break.

“Under my Leadership, we will codify a FUTURE-PROOF Digital Asset Market Structure that cannot be undone by the Crypto Haters,” the president wrote in a recent post on his social-media site. “The new Frontier of Finance is being Built in America, and ‘TRUMP’ will NEVER let Crypto down!”

His codifying promise may be dependent on what Trump is willing to allow into the Clarity Act involving an ethics provision aimed straight at him: banning government officials from personal stakes in the crypto industry. A bill without such limits is widely considered to be a dealbreaker for Senate Democrats, but crypto insiders are suggesting that a runway period has been raised that may not force Trump to divest from his own interests.

The Clarity Act recently cleared the Senate Banking Committee in a narrow bipartisan vote that drew loud fanfare from the industry. But a party-line approval of a parallel version in the Senate Agriculture Committee is now being litigated on certain points to bring that committee’s Democrats on board, including the potential requirement that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — a leading regulator of crypto activity — get nominations from the White House to fill all four of its commissioner vacancies (two Republicans and two Democrats).

Ongoing fights

Lobbyists from the banking industry are also expected to keep hammering away at the bill, which includes a section on stablecoin yield that bankers see as a threat to their deposit base. And the decentralized finance (DeFi) interests are still trying to acquire more legal shielding for developers who don’t want to be punished for illicit usage of their work.

So the bill isn’t done, and crypto advocates in Washington say it hasn’t leapt into June with a particularly quick start. Once the legislation is finished, including combining the versions from the banking and agriculture panels and adding an ethics provision, Senate leadership would need to set up some floor time — potentially a full week (one of the precious eight remaining before the August recess).

If not by then, there’s another smidge of time in September, and then comes the biggest wild card of the congressional calendar: the so-called “lame duck” session in which the members of this Congress will keep working for about four weeks after the elections have effectively fired some of the lawmakers and others are retiring. Desperate deals have been made for significant legislation during those sessions, but the odds are long.

Senator Cynthia Lummis, who chairs the digital assets subcommittee on the Senate banking panel, has been posting a steady stream of encouragement for pushing the Clarity Act.

“We are closer to a functioning digital asset market structure than we have ever been,” Lummis posted Tuesday on social media site X. “Now is not the time to flinch.”

Read More: Clarity Act clears U.S. Senate committee, on its way to a final test in Congress

IREN (IREN) shares rose more than 4% in pre-market trading on Wednesday after the company announced plans for an 800-megawatt data center campus in South Australia, marking its first major Australian data center project.

The agreement secures a high-voltage grid connection capable of supporting up to 800MW of power for the campus without requiring major network upgrades.

IREN said the project remains on track for initial energization beginning in 2028, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions. The site will also benefit from submarine fiber connectivity linking it to key Asia-Pacific markets, including Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan.

Management highlighted strong regional demand for AI infrastructure, noting a widening gap between projected computing needs and available capacity across Asia-Pacific. South Australia’s push toward 100% net renewable energy by 2027 was also cited as a key competitive advantage for the development.

Co-Founder and Co-CEO Daniel Roberts said the project combines access to abundant renewable energy, international connectivity and a supportive policy environment. The campus is expected to create more than 500 construction jobs and over 200 permanent skilled positions once operational.

Recently, Daniel Roberts said the company’s long-term AI strategy is built on owning power, land and data centers.