Ether Rally Turns Into Crypto Market Slide With Bitcoin Slipping Below $96K

Ethereum's ether (ETH) showed strength through the weekend, spurring investor hopes of a break in its lackluster price performance, only to foreshadow a market-wide decline.

In a muted trading session due to the U.S. holiday, ether ground as much as 7% higher to a Monday session high of $2,850, outperforming the rest of the crypto market. Then, it gave up most of the gains, dropping back to $2,730 as the broader market fell, with bitcoin (BTC) falling to $95,500 from just above $97,000. Still, ETH held onto its 2% advance over the past 24 hours, while the CoinDesk 20 Index and BTC were about 2% lower.

Traders were quick to point out past occasions, like late January and early February, when a brief ETH rally foreshadowed broader weakness in crypto prices. Then, ether's 10% rally to $3,400 in three days ended in an ugly capitulation event over trade war concerns, with BTC dropping 13% and ETH tumbling 35% to nearly $2,000 through a low-volume weekend.

Ether's strength occurred as memecoin fiascos such as Argentina's LIBRA on Solana and BNB Chain-based BROCCOLI — inspired by former Binance CEO CZ revealing his dog's name — weighed on the tokens of rival layer-1 networks.

"ETH’s recent price action isn’t an outperformance — it’s more of a catch-up to where it should be," Aran Hawker, CEO of trading automation platform CoinPanel, told CoinDesk over Telegram. "Some traders may have rotated back into ETH from SOL, but there’s no clear trend shift or structural change. Any perceived outperformance could be erased by the next major market move."

Joel Kruger, a market strategist for LMAX Group, was more optimistic, saying the price action might be a sign of ether ending its multiyear slide against bitcoin.

"There is evidence of ETH potentially wanting to finally put in a major bottom against bitcoin after downtrending since 2021," Kruger said in Monday's market note. "We believe it will be important to keep a close eye on the current monthly high in the ETHBTC ratio, with a break back above to encourage the reversal outlook."

Crypto traders' interest in betting on ETH spiked on Monday relative to BTC, CoinGlass data shows. Open interest for ETH futures rose 12% to 9.27 million contracts (worth nearly $2.6 billion) on all exchanges combined over the past 24 hours, led by offshore marketplaces Binance and Gate.io while BTC futures open interest grew only 1%.