Trading term

What is ETH/BTC ratio?

The ETH/BTC ratio is ether's price divided by bitcoin's: the price of one ether in bitcoin. It rises when ether does better than bitcoin and falls when it does worse, whatever the dollar prices do, and it's traded directly as the ETHBTC pair.

Because it's a ratio, it ignores the market's direction. If both coins rise 50% it doesn't move; it only moves when one beats the other. That makes it a scoreboard between the two biggest coins, and it's widely read as a gauge of appetite for everything smaller than bitcoin, since ether usually leads the rest of the market against bitcoin in the same window.

It peaked at a weekly close of about 0.14 in June 2017 and topped at about 0.088 in December 2021, and it finished lower in every year from 2022 to 2025. Ether tends to keep pace with bitcoin in rising months and fall further in falling ones, which is how the ratio has spent most of its history going down even in years ether made money in dollars.

For example

On 23 September 2026 ether closed at $2,684.71 and bitcoin at $84,397.60 on Binance. ETH/BTC was 2,684.71 ÷ 84,397.60 = 0.0318, so one ether was worth 0.0318 bitcoin, and one bitcoin was worth about 31 ether. At the December 2021 high one bitcoin was worth about 11.

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Why it matters to you

It's the chart people use to call 'alt season'. Measured since 2018, a rising ETH/BTC was there on almost every day most big coins were beating bitcoin, but most of the time it rose there was no alt season, and a rise one month said nothing about the next. It tells you how the market is behaving now. It doesn't tell you what comes next.

⚠ Reading a rising ether price as ether winning

In 2024 ether rose about 46% in dollars and ETH/BTC fell about a third, because bitcoin more than doubled. If the question is which coin to hold, the dollar price can't answer it. Only the ratio can.

Frequently asked questions

What does the ETH/BTC ratio tell you?

Whether ether is beating bitcoin. A rising ratio means ether did better over the period; a falling one means bitcoin did. It moves with the rest of the market against bitcoin in the same window, so it's a decent summary of how smaller coins are doing, but it didn't forecast the next month in nine years of data.

Does ETH/BTC rise in bull markets?

About half the time. In the months bitcoin rose from 2017 to 2026, ether beat it in roughly half; in the months bitcoin fell, it beat it in about a third. The ratio's long decline comes from the falling months, not the rising ones.

Read the full guide

DerivativesHow to Read the ETH/BTC RatioThe ETH/BTC ratio is ether's price divided by bitcoin's. Eleven years of it say ether has lost to bitcoin in every year since 2021, that it usually falls harder when bitcoin falls, and that almost every alt season came with ETH/BTC rising, but most ETH/BTC rallies came with no alt season. It describes the market. It doesn't forecast it.10 min read

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