Bitcoin liquidity surge widens lead over ETH and SOL
Bitcoin (BTC)
Editor:
Eugene Serbin
Benzinga.com reports that Bitcoin’s liquidity across major centralized exchanges surged nearly 50% in 2026, strengthening its position as the most institutionally accessible asset. The CoinGecko study found Bitcoin recorded median cumulative depth of roughly $29 million on the buy side and $37 million on the sell side, with Binance accounting for 25.3% of total BTC liquidity. Ethereum’s median liquidity stood at roughly $13 million to $14 million, equivalent to just 35% to 45% of Bitcoin’s depth, a decline from the 60% ratio seen in 2025.
Solana experienced a clearer deterioration, with single-sided liquidity dropping more than 28.5% to about $20 million. XRP’s order book became noticeably skewed toward buyers, holding nearly $18 million in bids compared with $14 million in asks, while its overall liquidity remained stable. Despite a larger market capitalization, Solana still possessed deeper cumulative liquidity within the 2% range than XRP, supported by roughly 25% higher average daily trading volume.
Dogecoin remained the least liquid of the five cryptocurrencies studied, recording only around $9 million to $12 million in single-sided liquidity. This shallow depth leaves the meme coin more exposed to slippage and larger price swings from sizable trades. Raoul Pal noted that improving liquidity and a weaker dollar could boost crypto, favoring Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Sui as tokenization and AI adoption grow.
How the market reacted
Whalio's own Binance spot order flow for BTC, measured when this story was written up on 6 October 2026. Not the outlet's figures.
Bitcoin is trading at $85,766.87 with a 1-hour buy ratio of 47.0% and a 4-hour buy ratio of 50.1%, indicating a short-term shift toward balanced buying pressure. However, the 24-hour buy ratio sits at 44.0%, suggesting that buying interest has faded over the full day. The 1-hour volume delta is negative at -$1,548,110, while the 4-hour delta is positive at +$452,743, showing that immediate selling has outweighed buying in the last hour despite recent accumulation. The 24-hour volume delta is -$167,050,199, and the Cumulative Volume Delta (CVD) at 24-hour close is -$8,779,374, confirming that net selling pressure has dominated the session. Spot volume reached $1,391,807,556 with 2,992,211 trades, but net buying occurred in only 7 of the 24 hours.
The latest daily buy ratio of 46.7% sits at the 18th percentile of the last 322 days, against a median of 49.2% - weaker buying than most days.
Was that an ordinary day?
The same Binance spot measurements for BTC, averaged over the days leading up to the story.
Over the preceding week, the 7-day average buy ratio was 48.2%, making today’s 24-hour ratio of 44.0% a decline of 4.2 percentage points. Volume was 1.04x the average, indicating slightly higher activity than usual, but net buying occurred in only 2 of the 7 days. The 8-day volume delta total was -$647,842,830, contrasting with the daily delta of -$167,050,199, which shows that the current day’s outflow is part of a broader weekly trend of net selling. The price changed +2.7% over 8 days, yet the negative delta suggests that this gain was not driven by sustained net buying flow.