Ether falls 4.4% to $2,132, nearly five times bitcoin's 0.9% drop, to its lowest since August

Ether traded at $2,132 on Coinbase at about 8:20 PM ET Sunday, down 4.4% from $2,230.85 a day earlier. Bitcoin, at $74,930, was down only 0.9% over the same 24 hours. Ether's Sunday low of $2,089.01 is its lowest daily low on Coinbase since August 19.

The number behind the number: ETH against BTC

Our morning report had ether at $2,238 and bitcoin at $75,901. At today's prices, one ether buys 0.02845 bitcoin, against 0.02949 this morning. That is a 3.5% loss in ether's value measured in bitcoin in about twelve hours, so most of the fall is ether-specific rather than a market-wide move. Over seven days (against the November 1 daily close) ether is down 6.2% and bitcoin 4.2%.

Coinbase Exchange. The 24-hour change compares the latest trade with the 24-hour-ago open; the other column compares with the November 1 daily close (UTC).

What is being said, and what is not established

Cointelegraph's Sunday Hodler's Digest reports that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argued in a thread that the network should promote ETH as a store of value rather than as a token whose worth comes from burning fees. It cites falling fees: median transaction fees dropped from 35 cents to 3.5 cents between January and October, while daily transactions rose by more than half. The same digest says some bitcoin holders reacted with scorn, and that bitcoin had fallen below $76,000 after the election, along with AI-related stocks. Reuters ran a headline on Sunday saying cryptocurrencies slid to two-month lows after the U.S. midterms; we could read only the headline.

Cointelegraph also describes a harder regulatory road: Democrats now control both chambers, it says, and Senator Elizabeth Warren is tipped to chair the Senate Banking Committee. It quotes the Decentralization Research Center's Kyle Bligen expecting "significantly more scrutiny" and says the CLARITY Act could return only with stronger ethics provisions. We covered the bill's earlier stall in October.

What we could not find is a source saying why ether fell more than bitcoin today. A policy thread from a co-founder and a regulatory outlook are plausible talking points, but the timing of the selling is not documented, and weekend liquidity is thin. We are reporting the move, not a cause.

What traders are watching

• $2,089, Sunday's low on Coinbase, and whether ether holds it when US markets reopen.
• The ETH/BTC ratio, which shows whether this is an ether-only slide or part of a wider move.
• Bitcoin's range: its Sunday low was $73,477, and we reported its seven-week low on Thursday.

Live quotes are on crypto prices and crypto movers.

Sources: Coinbase Exchange price data; Cointelegraph; Reuters (headline); Yahoo Finance. Information, not investment advice.