Ethereum Fell Twice as Hard as Bitcoin Overnight, Eleven Hours After a Testnet Upgrade
Ethereum fell roughly twice as hard as Bitcoin overnight, eleven hours after its largest protocol change by core EIP count since the Merge went live on a test network. Falling harder than Bitcoin on a Bitcoin down day is Ethereum’s job. Last night it did that job twice over, at every stage of the night.
At 7:08 a.m. ET on October 7, Bitcoin was trading at $83,773.50 USD, down 2.09% from its October 6 close of $85,557.56 USD. Ethereum was at $2,579.21 USD, down 4.39% from its October 6 close of $2,697.52 USD. That leaves Ethereum 2.30 percentage points behind Bitcoin on the day. Prices and moves here are Yahoo Finance data.
In Canadian dollars the damage was slightly lighter. Bitcoin was at $119,151.98 CAD, down 2.02%, and Ethereum at $3,670.79 CAD, down 4.26%. A Canadian holder’s loss was a little smaller than the US dollar headline on both.
Glamsterdam activated on the Sepolia test network on the morning of October 6, so the two share a calendar day. What it changes is narrower than a verdict on the upgrade: its two headline changes write proposer-builder separation into the protocol and add block-level access lists, which let clients validate parts of a block in parallel. It does not shorten block times, and the Ethereum Foundation has not scheduled a mainnet date. We covered Glamsterdam’s testnet activation in full, and the Foundation published its own announcement of the testnet schedule in September.
Ethereum fell harder, bounced less, then fell harder again
On hourly closes, both coins drifted gently for ten hours after the fork activated, Bitcoin losing 1.24% across the stretch. The night then breaks into three segments, and Ethereum underperformed in all three.
Between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. ET on October 6, Bitcoin went from 85,533.00 to 83,828.29, a fall of 1.99%, while Ethereum fell 3.14%. That is 1.15 percentage points of gap in two hours, with Ethereum falling 1.58 times as far.
Then both recovered. From 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. ET, Bitcoin rose 0.57% to 84,303.78 and Ethereum rose 0.32%, which is 0.57 times as much. Then both faded. From 2 a.m. to 7:08 a.m. ET, Bitcoin gave back 0.67% to 83,737.92 and Ethereum fell 1.64%, 2.45 times as far.
Across the whole night, 9 p.m. to 7:08 a.m., Bitcoin fell 2.10% and Ethereum fell 4.43%, a ratio of 2.11. Roughly half of the night’s relative damage was done inside the two hours that hit both coins, which rules out the tidy version of this move: a shared flush with a separate Ethereum-only problem bolted on.
Ethereum fell harder, bounced less, then fell harder again. Source: Yahoo Finance hourly closes.
The fork had been live for eleven hours by the time the flush began, and through the afternoon that followed activation Ethereum traded above Bitcoin on a relative basis. Measured from 11 a.m. ET on October 6, the hour after the fork, Ethereum is 5.33% lower, from 2,722.41 to 2,577.25.
On a typical Bitcoin down day, Ethereum falls 1.25 times as far
To test whether a ratio of 2.11 means anything, we measured every session since November 10, 2017 in which Bitcoin fell between 1.50% and 2.75%, the bucket containing today’s 2.09% fall. That is 331 prior sessions plus today, out of 3,254 sessions of overlapping daily closes.
In that bucket, Ethereum fell more than Bitcoin on 62.3% of sessions, with a median gap of 0.51 percentage points against Ethereum and a median Ethereum move of a fall of 2.52%. Nor is that an early-years artifact: the last 365 days contained 59 bucket sessions, with a median gap of 0.68 points against Ethereum, slightly wider than the all-time figure. On all 1,592 sessions where Bitcoin fell at all, the median Bitcoin move was a fall of 1.40% against a median Ethereum fall of 1.75%, a ratio of 1.25. Today’s overnight 2.11 is comparable with that daily measure: on daily closes, 4.39 against 2.09 is 2.10.
So the direction of today’s move is the expected outcome rather than a signal. Ethereum underperforming Bitcoin on a 2% Bitcoin down day is what usually happens, and it has been for nearly nine years. The 2.11 is what needs explaining, not the sign.
The size of the gap lands in the worst eighth of comparable sessions
Of the 331 prior comparable sessions, 39 were worse for Ethereum than today: 11.8%, or roughly one comparable session in eight.
“Nothing to see here” understates a reading in the worst eighth of its own distribution. “Ethereum is breaking down” ignores the 39 sessions in the same bucket that were worse, out to 7.90 points against Ethereum. Today is a bad day inside a known pattern.
Ethereum usually falls harder than Bitcoin. This much harder, one comparable session in eight. Source: Yahoo Finance daily closes, our calculation.
Ethereum has been gaining ground on Bitcoin since June
The year-to-date figures read like a slow bleed. Bitcoin is down 5.6% in 2026, from a first 2026 close of $88,731.98 USD, and Ethereum is down 14.0%, from a first 2026 close of $3,000.39 USD. That is two and a half times the year-to-date decline.
Priced directly in Bitcoin, the sequence matters. Ethereum’s first 2026 close was 0.0338 BTC, it bottomed at 0.0258 on June 6, and it sits at 0.0308 today. That is 8.9% below the year’s open and 19.5% above the June low. The climb was uneven: August 19 alone took the ratio from 0.029630 to 0.032504, a 9.7% jump in a single day inside a run that reached 26.8% above the June low by September.
Ethereum bottomed against Bitcoin in June and has clawed back since. Source: Yahoo Finance daily closes.
The recovery had already stalled before last night: the ratio peaked at 0.032690 on September 12 and had drifted 3.6% to 0.031529 by October 6. Today’s 0.030789 is the lowest reading since August 18, the day before that step. A holder who would rather own the exposure through a TSX listing than the coin itself is choosing between companies whose coin piles and share counts both move, which is why we rank Canadian crypto stocks on bitcoin per share rather than on the size of the treasury.
The dollar did not rise before the flush
A risk-off reading needs supporting inputs, and ours are thin. WTI crude settled at $89.41 on October 6, barely changed from $89.33 on October 5 and well below the $91.08 of October 2. The US 10-year Treasury yield closed at 5.269% on October 6, down from 5.311% on October 5. Oil is the NYMEX WTI November contract settlement-window price rebuilt from Yahoo Finance trade data, and the yield is Yahoo Finance data.
The currency is the one input pointing the way a risk-off story needs, and the order of events does not fit. The ICE Dollar Index reading of 102.313 is from October 7, hours after the October 6 evening flush, and it is an intraday reading set against closes. It is up 0.14% on October 5’s close of 102.17 and 0.47% on October 6’s close of 101.83, retracing one down day. A two-hour overnight flush is allowed to be exactly that.
What the night actually established
Ethereum falling harder than Bitcoin is ordinary, and nearly nine years of daily closes say so. Falling 2.11 times as hard, with the asymmetry in the flush, the bounce and the fade alike, sits at the edge of ordinary without leaving it. And 2026 is not the one-way decline the year-to-date figures imply: Ethereum took ground back from June, stalled in September, and last night put it at its lowest against Bitcoin since mid-August.
Data as of October 7, 2026. The 7:08 a.m. ET prices are live bars, not closes.
Disclaimer: The content on bestcanadianstocks.ca is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Crypto prices, percentage moves and the hourly path are Yahoo Finance data for Bitcoin and Ethereum in US and Canadian dollars, frozen at 7:08 a.m. ET on October 7, 2026. Yahoo labels an hourly bar by the time it opens, so every clock time here stamps a bar’s close at the time it actually occurred. The control test across 3,254 overlapping sessions since November 10, 2017 is our own screen of daily closes. Oil is the NYMEX WTI November contract settlement-window price rebuilt from Yahoo Finance trade data. Glamsterdam detail comes from the Ethereum Foundation’s own testnet announcement.
