Ether Outperforms Bitcoin in Q3 but Faces Declining Liquidity
While ETH posted stronger gains than BTC during the third quarter, market depth for the asset thinned significantly, making it harder to trade without impacting price.
Ether outperformed bitcoin in the third quarter, with the price of ETH surging 70% compared to a 42% gain for BTC. Despite this rally, data from CoinGecko indicates that ether's market liquidity has thinned, complicating trade execution.
Market depth, which measures the dollar value of buy and sell orders near the current price, showed a decline for ether between July 6 and Sept. 30. During this period, ether's median daily market depth reached only 35% to 45% of bitcoin's levels, a drop from the 60% recorded during the same timeframe last year.
The report highlights that ether maintained $13 million to $14 million in depth within 0.15% of its market price. While CoinGecko noted that ETH remains fairly liquid at this range, the thinning order books challenge the assumption that rising prices automatically attract enough volume to deepen liquidity.
Other major tokens also saw shifts in market depth. Solana's liquidity has shrunk considerably since 2025, with depth within 2% of the market price falling from approximately $28 million on each side of the order book last year to around $20 million this year. This decline suggests a reduced capacity for the SOL market to absorb larger price swings.
Meanwhile, XRP displayed a bullish skew in its order books, with $18 million in bids against $14 million in asks. Although XRP has a market cap roughly 40% larger than SOL, it possesses less depth within 2% of the price, a discrepancy CoinGecko attributes to SOL's higher average daily trading volume.
