Ether's bitcoin-beating Q3 rally came with a catch. Liquidity thinned.

Ether's bitcoin-beating Q3 rally came with a catch. Liquidity thinned.Ether beat bitcoin in the third quarter, but its market liquidity got thinner, according to Coingecko.Oct 4, 2026, 11:50 p.m. EDTEther's liquidity thinned versus bitcoin, according to a new report. (Claudia Wollesen/Pixabay)Ether’s price rose more than bitcoin in the third quarter. But the token’s liquidity thinned out relative to bitcoin, according to Coingecko. XRP’s liquidity was skewed bullish, Coingecko added, Ethereum's native token ether ETH$2,722.86 had a better third quarter than bitcoin BTC$86,252.73. Still, it got harder to trade, as liquidity, or how easily a token can be bought and sold without moving its price, thinned out.Ether's price surged 70% in the quarter, outpacing bitcoin's 42% gain. Yet between July 6 and Sept. 30, its median daily market depth was just 35% to 45% of bitcoin's, according to a report by CoinGecko. In the same period last year, it was at least 60%. CoinGecko called it "a stark drop from last year's figures."Market depth is the standard way to measure liquidity. It's the total dollar value of buy and sell orders sitting on exchanges within a set distance of the current price. The deeper the market, the more money it takes to move the price. In a thin market, a large order quickly eats through available orders and pushes the price further.Ether had $13 million to $14 million in depth within 0.15% of its market price. In simple terms, that's roughly how much money was sitting in orders close enough to the price that clearing it would move ether by just 0.15%. Depth this close to the price matters most for everyday trades, and for large orders that traders want filled without moving the market.The data undercuts a popular idea in markets that rising prices pull in more traders, and more traders mean deeper order books. That didn't happen with ether.That said, ether is still fairly easy to trade. "ETH remains fairly liquid at this range [within 0.15% of the market price], with most exchanges maintaining over $1 million in depth on each side," CoinGecko said.And ether isn't the only major token with thinner markets.Liquidity in solana's SOL, ether's main rival, has also shrunk, though CoinGecko measured it over a wider range. "The overall liquidity for SOL has shrunk considerably since 2025," the firm said.SOL's depth within 2% of the market price fell from about $28 million on each side of the order book last year to around $20 million this year. Depth at 2% shows how much money sits in orders further from the current price. It's a gauge of how much selling or buying pressure the market can absorb before the price makes a bigger move, the kind seen during a sharp rally or sell-off. So while ether's thinning shows up right next to the price, SOL's shows up in its ability to handle larger swings.XRP, the payments-focused cryptocurrency, held steady at around $30 million in total depth. But its order books leaned toward buyers during the study period, with close to $18 million in bids against $14 million in asks.XRP's market cap is about 40% larger than SOL's, yet it has less depth within 2% of the price. That's because SOL still trades 25% more than XRP on an average day, CoinGecko said.12345678910