【📉 Why hasn’t Ethereum followed Bitcoin’s rally over the past few days?】
The short answer: it’s not that “ETH is broken”; it’s that “it hasn’t been able to keep up over the past 1–2 weeks,” and there are several clear reasons why.
$BTC is up 3.83% over the past 7 days, while $ETH is up 1.50% — a lag of 2.33 percentage points.
But over longer periods, the picture is reversed:
· 30 days: BTC +8.60% ｜ ETH +10.03%
· 60 days: BTC +34.78% ｜ ETH +43.33%
· 90 days: BTC +36.82% ｜ ETH +54.06% (ETH leads by 17 percentage points)
The ETH/BTC exchange rate is now 0.0315, at the 7th percentile of its 30-day range (its weakest level in a month), but it remains at the 63rd percentile over the past 90 days.
▬ Three mechanisms, each more straightforward than the last (all figures are for the past 7 days)
1) Net taker flows differ by $400 million
BTC: +$89 million (net buying)
ETH: −$317 million (net selling)
Money is actively flowing from ETH into BTC. That’s the most direct answer.
2) Retail longs in ETH are 2.4 times as crowded
Retail account long/short ratio: BTC 1.17→0.99 ｜ ETH 2.69→2.38
In other words, ETH has a pile of long positions waiting to break even or chasing the rally, and they get sold into whenever the price rises.
3) Going long on ETH costs 2.8 times as much as going long on BTC
Annualized funding rate: BTC +2.1% ｜ ETH +5.8%
Meanwhile, large investors are quietly adding to their long positions:
· ETH whale long/short ratio: 1.56 → 1.70 (rising)
· ETH open interest is up 3.1% over the past 24 hours; BTC is down 0.4%
Whales are buying the dip while retail traders are capitulating—the two sides are moving in opposite directions.
▬ Similar situations have occurred 217 times historically
I screened 5.2 years of data for cases where “BTC rose ≥3% over 7 days and outperformed ETH by ≥2pp”:
· Over the following 30 days, ETH made up an average of +1.42pp relative to BTC
· The probability of ETH catching up was 53%, versus an unconditional baseline of only 42%
· But in the “outperformance of 2–4pp” bucket—which is where we are now—the probability was only 46% (a t-statistic of 1.89, not statistically significant)
· The bucket with a clear catch-up effect was “outperformance ≥4pp”: 58%
So the claim that “it’s ETH’s turn to catch up” gets only very weak support from the data. Don’t treat it as a reason to buy.
▬ There’s an even more compelling structural fact
The ETH/BTC exchange rate has fallen 56% over 5.2 years (0.0718 → 0.0315).
2021 +10.8% ｜ 2022 −8.4% ｜ 2023 −25.3% ｜ 2024 −33.0% ｜ 2025 −4.6% ｜ 2026 year to date −5.9%
Except for 2021, ETH has underperformed BTC every year.
So “ETH underperforms over the long term” is the base case; any catch-up would be against the trend.
▬ How to tell whether things are changing
The exchange rate needs to move back above 0.0320 (the 30-day moving average) for ETH to regain the initiative. It’s currently at 0.0315.
You only need to watch three figures:
① ETH net taker flows turn positive
② The retail long/short ratio falls from 2.38
③ The exchange rate recovers 0.0320
Until these three things change, ETH will keep following BTC—gaining less when prices rise and losing more when they fall.
▬ Limitations
The local data used for the historical comparison only goes up to 2026-08-24 and doesn’t include the past 6 weeks; the 217 sample windows overlap heavily, so the effective number of independent samples is far below 217.
All of the above is based on public data and my own calculations, and is not investment advice.
$BTC $ETH
The short answer: it’s not that “ETH is broken”; it’s that “it hasn’t been able to keep up over the past 1–2 weeks,” and there are several clear reasons why.
$BTC is up 3.83% over the past 7 days, while $ETH is up 1.50% — a lag of 2.33 percentage points.
But over longer periods, the picture is reversed:
· 30 days: BTC +8.60% ｜ ETH +10.03%
· 60 days: BTC +34.78% ｜ ETH +43.33%
· 90 days: BTC +36.82% ｜ ETH +54.06% (ETH leads by 17 percentage points)
The ETH/BTC exchange rate is now 0.0315, at the 7th percentile of its 30-day range (its weakest level in a month), but it remains at the 63rd percentile over the past 90 days.
▬ Three mechanisms, each more straightforward than the last (all figures are for the past 7 days)
1) Net taker flows differ by $400 million
BTC: +$89 million (net buying)
ETH: −$317 million (net selling)
Money is actively flowing from ETH into BTC. That’s the most direct answer.
2) Retail longs in ETH are 2.4 times as crowded
Retail account long/short ratio: BTC 1.17→0.99 ｜ ETH 2.69→2.38
In other words, ETH has a pile of long positions waiting to break even or chasing the rally, and they get sold into whenever the price rises.
3) Going long on ETH costs 2.8 times as much as going long on BTC
Annualized funding rate: BTC +2.1% ｜ ETH +5.8%
Meanwhile, large investors are quietly adding to their long positions:
· ETH whale long/short ratio: 1.56 → 1.70 (rising)
· ETH open interest is up 3.1% over the past 24 hours; BTC is down 0.4%
Whales are buying the dip while retail traders are capitulating—the two sides are moving in opposite directions.
▬ Similar situations have occurred 217 times historically
I screened 5.2 years of data for cases where “BTC rose ≥3% over 7 days and outperformed ETH by ≥2pp”:
· Over the following 30 days, ETH made up an average of +1.42pp relative to BTC
· The probability of ETH catching up was 53%, versus an unconditional baseline of only 42%
· But in the “outperformance of 2–4pp” bucket—which is where we are now—the probability was only 46% (a t-statistic of 1.89, not statistically significant)
· The bucket with a clear catch-up effect was “outperformance ≥4pp”: 58%
So the claim that “it’s ETH’s turn to catch up” gets only very weak support from the data. Don’t treat it as a reason to buy.
▬ There’s an even more compelling structural fact
The ETH/BTC exchange rate has fallen 56% over 5.2 years (0.0718 → 0.0315).
2021 +10.8% ｜ 2022 −8.4% ｜ 2023 −25.3% ｜ 2024 −33.0% ｜ 2025 −4.6% ｜ 2026 year to date −5.9%
Except for 2021, ETH has underperformed BTC every year.
So “ETH underperforms over the long term” is the base case; any catch-up would be against the trend.
▬ How to tell whether things are changing
The exchange rate needs to move back above 0.0320 (the 30-day moving average) for ETH to regain the initiative. It’s currently at 0.0315.
You only need to watch three figures:
① ETH net taker flows turn positive
② The retail long/short ratio falls from 2.38
③ The exchange rate recovers 0.0320
Until these three things change, ETH will keep following BTC—gaining less when prices rise and losing more when they fall.
▬ Limitations
The local data used for the historical comparison only goes up to 2026-08-24 and doesn’t include the past 6 weeks; the 217 sample windows overlap heavily, so the effective number of independent samples is far below 217.
All of the above is based on public data and my own calculations, and is not investment advice.
$BTC $ETH