Historical replay · ETH/USD
Ether Fell 3.6% in 75 Minutes on a Saturday Afternoon, Below $2,300, Then Recovered 3.3% by Midnight (October 2026)
On Saturday, October 24, 2026, ether traded quietly near $2,368 until 14:00 UTC. In the next 75 minutes it fell to $2,282.46, its lowest price since at least the start of September, on $139 million of volume in the 15:00 hour alone, about 21 times the hour before. Bitcoin fell below $79,300 in the same minutes. By the end of the day ether was back at $2,358.82. Replay a weekend sell-off with no headline attached.
Ether went into the weekend already weak. It had fallen from about $2,726 on October 5 to $2,387.60 at the close of October 23, a drop of about 12% while bitcoin lost about 6%, and US spot ether ETFs ended the week with net outflows of about $220.7 million, according to Farside data, against net inflows of about $301.2 million for the bitcoin funds. On October 22 Ethereum's developers had also pulled the Glamsterdam upgrade from its October 26 testnet date after a security review, removing a catalyst some traders had been waiting for. Saturday morning was calm: the 12:00 and 13:00 UTC hours traded $6.6 million to $8.1 million each in a range of less than $10.
The selling began at 14:00 UTC, 10 a.m. in New York. That hour fell from $2,368.24 to $2,342.57 on $69 million, about ten times the hour before. Then came the two candles that did the damage. The 15:00 quarter-hour fell 1.29% to $2,312.43 on $48.9 million and 172,319 trades, and the 15:15 candle reached $2,282.46, 3.6% below the 14:00 open, and closed at $2,290.69 on $68.4 million and 230,086 trades. The 15:00 hour as a whole traded $139.5 million, about 21 times the 13:00 hour. Bitcoin fell from $80,214 to $79,220.74 in the same half-hour, a smaller 1.2% move, so the selling was concentrated in ether rather than spread across the market. No single news item was reported as the cause, and this replay does not guess at one.
The recovery was slow and steady, with none of the urgency of the fall. The 15:30 and 15:45 candles added 0.17% and 0.52%, a retest at 16:15 held at $2,294.84 above the low, and each hour of the evening closed a little higher on falling volume: $2,323.25 at 17:00, $2,339.62 at 19:00 and $2,358.82 at the end of the day, 3.3% above the low. The daily candle shows a modest 1.21% loss with a long lower wick. On Sunday morning, October 25, ether traded between $2,347 and $2,372.
A Saturday is the hardest time to read a move like this. The order books of even the second-largest crypto asset are thinner when US and European desks are away, so a seller of a few hundred million dollars can push the price several percent in minutes, and the bounce can be as mechanical as the drop. Two details help. The fall happened on two candles with 21 times normal volume, a sign of forced or impatient selling, possibly stop orders below $2,300; the rebound came on declining volume, which says buyers stepped in without chasing. And the low held on the retest, which is the first thing a trader looking for a floor would check. Whether it holds again depends on the week ahead, with the Fed on Wednesday and the US megacap reports, not on the weekend that produced it.