Ether Trading Volume Fell 23% During 71% Third-Quarter Rally

Ether (ETH) advanced 71% in the third quarter while its average daily trading volume dropped 23.2%, leaving a thinner trading backdrop for a rally that has since partly reversed.

Daily volume averaged $11.5 billion, down from $15.0 billion in the second quarter. ETH finished Sept. 30 at $2,684. The gain, its strongest since the first quarter of 2021, ended three consecutive losing quarters.

The volume decline adds a measure of trading activity to the earlier account of Ether’s rally. ETH’s price rose sharply over the quarter even as the average dollar value traded each day fell from the preceding three months.

At about 11:23 a.m. ET (15:23 UTC) on Oct. 21, ETH traded near $2,504. That was roughly 7% below its September close. The October reading captures a later point in time than the quarterly gain and does not change the third-quarter result.

U.S. spot Ether exchange-traded funds brought in $3.1 billion during the third quarter. More recently, the funds posted a $26.1 million net withdrawal in the Oct. 20 trading session, extending a five-session outflow streak to $388.9 million. Each session from Oct. 14 through Oct. 20 recorded net withdrawals.

Those fund totals cover different periods: one spans the full third quarter, while the withdrawal streak falls in October. Fund flows also measure money entering or leaving the U.S. products, whereas the trading-volume figure measures activity across ETH markets during the quarter.

The broader crypto market showed a similar split between value and trading. Total market capitalization climbed 39.6% to about $3 trillion in the third quarter, even as average daily market volume slid 8.6% to $73.3 billion. Ether’s volume decline was steeper than the marketwide drop.

Ethereum held about $143.5 billion in stablecoins in an Oct. 21 snapshot, equal to 47.7% of the $301.1 billion tracked across networks. That balance describes stablecoins on the Ethereum network. It does not measure purchases of ETH or offset the decline in the asset’s trading volume.