What Is Ethereum (ETH)? Supply, Liquidity and Market Structure

What is Ethereum? Ethereum (ETH) is a smart-contract blockchain, and ETH is the coin that pays for activity on it and secures it through staking. As a market it behaves like a faster BTC. Over the 90 days to 11 October 2026 its average daily range was 3.7%, which is 1.35 times Bitcoin's, and its daily returns correlated 0.87 with BTC's. This page sets out how ETH trades, using our own numbers, and why the ETH/BTC ratio matters when you size and time a trade.

All statistics below come from Binance spot candles for 14 July to 11 October 2026 (UTC). Supply figures are from CoinGecko, fetched on 12 October 2026. Nothing here is a forecast.

What is Ethereum

Ethereum launched on 30 July 2015 according to CoinGecko's genesis date. Two facts from ethereum.org shape how ETH is held and traded today:

• Proof of stake since the Merge. The Merge took place on 15 September 2022. Mining stopped producing valid blocks, and validators who have staked ETH now propose blocks and validate transactions.
• Staking and burning. To become a validator, a user deposits 32 ETH into the deposit contract. A slot lasts 12 seconds, and an epoch is 32 slots. Transaction tips go to the validator, while the base fee is burned, which removes it from circulation.

For a trader, the useful part is what ETH is not: it is not a fixed-supply asset like BTC, and it is not a pure payment coin. How it behaves in the market is in the numbers below.

How ETH trades: the fingerprint

The cover is ETH's fingerprint: the average 1h range by UTC hour, the busiest hour and the daily range. ETH's average daily range over 90 days is 3.7% (median 3.0%). Only 22 days stayed under 2%. Four days printed 8% or more, and one of them, 19 August, covered 22.3% from low to high.

The shape matches BTC's, scaled up. The 1h range climbs from 0.82% at 12:00 UTC to 0.98% at 13:00 and peaks at 1.04% at 14:00 UTC (17:00 in Moscow, 10:00 in New York). It is lowest at 04:00 UTC with 0.48%, so the peak hour is about 2.2 times as active as the quietest. By session, the average hourly range is 0.56% in Asia (00:00 to 08:00 UTC), 0.64% in London (08:00 to 13:00) and 0.78% in New York (13:00 to 21:00): New York runs 39% hotter than Asia. For how we define sessions, see trading sessions. The same hourly method applied to the benchmark is in Bitcoin volatility by hour.

Weekends cool ETH down, but less than BTC. The average daily range is 2.38% on weekend days and 4.18% on weekdays, so a weekend carries 57% of a weekday's range. For BTC the same ratio is 45%. In plain terms, ETH keeps more of its movement when the market is thin.

Supply and unlocks

CoinGecko, on 12 October 2026, shows 122,127,761 ETH in circulation, the same figure as total supply, with no maximum supply listed. Market capitalisation was about $308 billion, the second largest on CoinGecko that day.

There is no hard cap to chart against, so the supply question for ETH is about flows, not a ceiling. ethereum.org confirms that the base fee is burned and that proof of stake needs less new issuance than mining did, but it does not publish issuance rates on the pages we cite, and we do not estimate a net supply change here. We also do not track staking withdrawal queues in this guide.

Where it trades

We pulled the rolling 24-hour spot volume of ETH from the public ticker APIs of five exchanges on 12 October 2026 at 20:18 UTC.

Binance leads with $645 million (42% of the five-venue total of about $1.54 billion), then OKX with $397 million (26%), Bybit with $228 million (15%), Coinbase with $192 million (13%) and KuCoin with $75 million (5%). Compared with BTC, volume is more concentrated: Binance has 42% of ETH against 36% of BTC. Coinbase is the USD pair, the others are USDT pairs.

ETH vs BTC: the ratio and the correlation

The ETH/BTC price tells you whether ETH is outrunning Bitcoin or lagging it. Over the 90 days it closed between 0.0287 and 0.0327, finishing at 0.0303 after opening the period at 0.0285, a gain of 6.3%. It rose on 44 of the 90 days.

Most of that gain arrived in one day. On 19 August ETH/BTC closed 9.7% higher than the day before (ETH's day was +17.5%, BTC's +7.1%). Before it, the ratio closed between 0.0287 and 0.0301. From that day on it closed between 0.0301 and 0.0327. We do not assign a cause. What the number does show is how ETH behaves when BTC makes a large move: it moves more.

The numbers say the same. Regressing ETH's daily returns on BTC's gives a beta of 1.23: on an average day, a 1% BTC move came with a 1.23% ETH move. Daily return volatility was 2.81% for ETH against 1.99% for BTC.

Correlation is high and has been rising. The rolling 30-day figure ranged from 0.82 to 0.94 and ended at 0.93, against 0.87 for the full 90 days. High correlation means ETH rarely offers a hedge for a BTC position. It does mean a BTC signal is useful for timing ETH. Our companion guide to Bitcoin sets the baseline, and the guides to Solana and XRP show coins with a higher range multiple.

Reading ETH's structure

The 4h chart below covers 3 to 12 October 2026, with the BiasNex engine's structure marks as of 12 October.

The engine marked a change of character (CHoCH) to the downside, a break of structure (BOS) to the downside, and then a CHoCH back up. At the snapshot, ETH sat among four levels within 3.5% of each other: a buy-side liquidity level (BSL) at 2,584, the previous-day high (PDH) at 2,555, a sell-side liquidity level (SSL) at 2,521 and the previous-day low (PDL) at 2,498. Learn the vocabulary in market structure, break of structure and change of character. Structure moves fast, so use today's live ETH structure for the current read.

Risks

• One window. Ninety days includes a very large 19 August move. The median daily range (3.0%) is a better guide to a normal day than the 3.7% average.
• Correlation can break. A 0.87 correlation describes the past 90 days. It does not guarantee ETH follows BTC tomorrow.
• Wider ranges need wider stops. ETH's range is 1.35 times BTC's, so the same dollar risk needs a smaller position. Use the position size calculator.
• No supply cap to lean on. Do not treat ETH like a fixed-supply asset.

FAQ

What is Ethereum? Ethereum is a smart-contract blockchain that moved to proof of stake on 15 September 2022. Validators stake ETH, and the base fee on transactions is burned (ethereum.org).

Does ETH move more than BTC? Yes. In the 90 days to 11 October 2026 ETH's average daily range was 3.7% against 2.7% for BTC (1.35 times), and its beta to BTC's daily returns was 1.23.

When is ETH most active? The busiest UTC hour was 14:00, with an average 1h range of 1.04%. The quietest was 04:00 UTC at 0.48%.