Ether's daily low came in at $2,495.93 overnight into Monday. The $2,495 level, the one we asked about on Sunday, therefore held, and it held by 93 cents. On Monday morning Ethereum trades at
Ether's daily low came in at $2,495.93 overnight into Monday. The $2,495 level, the one we asked about on Sunday, therefore held, and it held by 93 cents. On Monday morning Ethereum trades at $2,562.06, up 2.36 percent over 24 hours. Over seven days the price is still down 5.17 percent. This week brings two fixed dates that can move the price more than any news from the network itself: the US consumer price index on Wednesday and the options expiry on Friday.
The figures come from CoinGecko as of Monday morning. Ether costs $2,562.06. The daily high stands at $2,567.88, the daily low at $2,495.93. Market capitalisation is $312.9 billion, and turnover over the past 24 hours $9.83 billion. A good 3.1 percent of the entire market capitalisation therefore changes hands in a single day, a normal reading for a quiet Monday.
The all-time high of $4,946.05 is 48.2 percent away. Bitcoin trades at $83,921 and sits 33.4 percent below its own peak. The gap between those two numbers is the real finding of this autumn: Ether has recovered considerably less from the setback than the larger currency.
On Sunday our article on the Ethereum price at $2,504 asked whether the $2,495 level would carry. The overnight order book delivers the answer. The lowest level traded in the past 24 hours is $2,495.93. From there the price rose 2.65 percent to its current reading.
A level that holds to the cent is neither coincidence nor magic. Behind it sit buy orders stacked in the order book. Many investors place limit buys on round numbers, and $2,500 is one of them. Those bids then fill just below, because sellers work through exactly those orders. In practice, a level is reliable for as long as the volume sits there, and it loses its effect the moment the orders have been worked off.
The US consumer price index for September is released on Wednesday, October 14, at 8:30 a.m. New York time, which is 2:30 p.m. in Germany. The week-ahead preview from The Crypto Times dated October 12 puts expectations at 0.6 percent month on month and 3.6 to 3.7 percent year on year, with a core rate of 0.2 and 2.5 percent respectively.
The second date is the expiry of Bitcoin and Ether options on Friday, October 16. The same preview puts open positions at roughly $1.25 billion for Bitcoin and $247.5 million for Ether, based on a provisional snapshot from the derivatives exchange Deribit. In between come quarterly results from the large US banks: JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Wells Fargo on Tuesday, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley on Wednesday. Thursday brings producer prices, retail sales and initial jobless claims. The next Federal Reserve meeting is not due until October 27 and 28.
An option is a right, not an obligation. The buyer of a call may take delivery of Ether at a set price, and the buyer of a put may hand it over at a set price. Those rights were sold by a counterparty, usually a professional trader who does not want to carry the risk openly. That trader hedges on the spot market by buying or selling Ether, and adjusts the hedge continuously as the price moves.
The adjustment is the transmission channel. The closer the expiry date, the more sharply the required hedge reacts to small price moves, because the cut-off decides whether an option expires worthless or is exercised. As a result the counterparty buys or sells more, and faster, in the final hours. The price is not pushed in one direction, but it jitters more. After the expiry the pressure drops away abruptly, and the market often turns quieter than it was before.
Ninety-three cents sat between water level and crest, and that is how narrowly the $2,495 level held overnight into Monday.
The ratio of the two numbers rewards a closer look. The $247.5 million of open Ether positions are 19.8 percent of the $1.25 billion expiring in Bitcoin. Ether therefore carries just under a fifth of the derivatives volume, while its market capitalisation of $312.9 billion is 18.6 percent of Bitcoin's roughly $1.69 trillion. The proportions roughly match, which makes Friday exactly as important for Ether as it is for Bitcoin, namely moderately.
Read the same numbers across to Wednesday and the conclusion reverses. The price index acts on all risk assets at once and through the rate path, not through a single derivatives exchange. A reading above expectations hits Ether with full force, because the currency has had the weaker run in recent weeks anyway.
On October 8 our Ethereum price prediction on BitMine's buying halt described how the company was roughly 100,000 ether short of its self-imposed threshold of five percent of all coins. Its holdings stood at a good six million ether at the time. Two things have happened since.
First, the price finished its move down and turned. On October 7 the sheet read $2,598, on Sunday $2,504, today $2,562.06. Against Sunday that is $58 more; against October 7 it is still $36 or 1.40 percent short. Second, the open question of that day has become a concrete week with two dates. The market's largest buyer has announced its ceiling, and outside demand this week comes from rate expectations rather than from a corporate balance sheet.
The US spot ETFs on Ether recorded a net outflow of $56.1 million on October 9, the ninth consecutive trading day with a negative balance. The figures come from the data service SoSoValue. The day before it was $72.54 million, so the outflow has shrunk by almost 23 percent. In the week from October 5 to 9 outflows added up to $542.2 million, and across the whole run since September 29 to $697.2 million.
The run sounds more dramatic than it is in proportion. Since the products launched, a net $13.260 billion has flowed into these funds. The outflows of the past two weeks amount to 5.3 percent of that. For comparison: our article of October 7 spoke of six outflow days, there are now nine, and the daily amount is falling. A trend that is weakening is not yet a reversal, but neither is it the same as an accelerating exit.
Over 30 days Ether is up 2.00 percent and Bitcoin 8.72 percent. The difference of 6.72 percentage points is the number that describes this autumn for Ether. Over seven days the picture does not change: minus 5.17 percent for Ether against minus 1.86 percent for Bitcoin.
If you hold a mixed position, your portfolio shifts on its own in phases like this. An investor who held equal parts of both currencies in September owns markedly more Bitcoin than Ether by value today. Nobody decided on the shift, and it continues with the next purchase unless you notice it. A portfolio tracker shows the shift in percentage points rather than in gut feeling, and the tools for it are in our comparison of tax tools and portfolio trackers.
On Friday the clock runs out for the options that are still open today, and the hedging pressure falls away with it.
Ahead of a date like Wednesday, selling in Germany regularly happens for the wrong reason. For private investors, Paragraph 23 of the German Income Tax Act sets a holding period of one year. Investors who have held their Ether for more than twelve months and then sell pay no income tax on the gain. Sell within the year and the gain is taxed at your personal rate as soon as all private disposals in a year together exceed the threshold of 1,000 euros.
The word threshold is to be taken literally here. Unlike an allowance it does not taper: at 999 euros of gains everything stays tax-free, at 1,001 euros the entire amount becomes taxable. Losses from such transactions can be offset only against gains of the same kind, but they can be carried into other years. The practical thing to reach for before Wednesday is therefore not the chart but your acquisition date. If the purchase was eleven months ago, selling out of nerves may cost more in tax than the price slide you are fleeing.
Leveraged positions become more dangerous on scheduled dates, because price swings concentrate in the minutes after a release. The liquidation price of a position does not move, but the probability of touching it in a short space of time does.
Concretely: look up the price at which your position is closed out, and compare that distance with the swings of recent days. The daily low was $2,495.93 and the daily high $2,567.88, so $72 or 2.8 percent apart. A buffer of less than three percent is mathematically at stake on a Wednesday carrying an inflation figure. Either reduce the size or add collateral, and do it before the release, because spreads regularly widen in the minute afterwards.
For most investors in Germany, Friday is a date they experience only indirectly. The large crypto derivatives exchanges do not address retail clients in the European Union, and since the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, MiCA for short, any provider that turns to clients in the EU needs authorisation. The German supervisor BaFin lists the houses that hold it in a public register.
Two routes remain, and both come with drawbacks. Contracts for difference on crypto-assets are capped at leverage of 2 to 1 for retail investors, a requirement that goes back to the European securities regulator ESMA and has been adopted permanently by BaFin. The cap limits the damage but costs overnight financing fees. The second route is the spot market on a regulated exchange, where the expiry is felt only as higher volatility. Which trading venues operate under MiCA and what they charge is set out in our comparison of the best crypto exchanges.
From the newsroom's point of view, the price index on Wednesday is the date that counts this week, and the options expiry on Friday is the smaller story. The evidence sits above: $247.5 million of open Ether volume is a fifth of what expires in Bitcoin, and hedging pressure from options lasts only hours. An inflation figure, by contrast, shifts rate expectations out to the meeting on October 27 and 28, and with them the price of every risk in a portfolio.
One number argues against that, and it is the most serious in this text: nine days of outflows from the Ether funds show that institutional demand is currently absent, regardless of the macro picture. A friendly Wednesday can therefore fizzle out if a tenth outflow day follows on Thursday. Tom Lee, chairman of the supervisory board at BitMine, publicly expects more than $5,000 by the end of the year. That is a single voice with its own interest in the currency, not a market view. We assess the situation here and do not issue a buy or sell recommendation.
On the upside the next hurdle is $2,567.88, Monday morning's daily high, and just above it begins the zone between $2,600 and $2,700 where technical analyses locate resistance. The October 7 reading of $2,598 lies in the middle of it and is 1.40 percent away.
On the downside the $2,495 level counts first, the one that held by 93 cents overnight into Monday. Below it the same analyses name a support zone between $2,400 and $2,500. Considerably lower runs the 200-day line, which one assessment puts near $2,130 and which therefore sits 16.9 percent below the current price. The line is not a target for this week, it describes how far away the floor would be if Wednesday turns out very badly.
Three steps for this week, in this order:
(As of October 12, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
