Crypto Volumes Sink to 2022 Lows as ETH Underperforms BTC and Gas Fees Bottom

The amount of trading in the crypto market is clearly going down. In a study on its X platform, 10x Research says that the amount of cryptocurrency traded has reached a new low since 2022. The market value is still $2.3 trillion, which is 1.7% less than last week. Even though this number isn't very scary on its own, the fact that trade volume has dropped overall makes the message much clearer: market activity is moving at the same rate as the 2022 bear market.

Weekly trading volume declined across the board, with both BTC and ETH falling below the average.

This week, the average weekly trade amount for the whole market was $90 billion, which is 7% less than the average over the past few years. Bitcoin's weekly trading volume was $38.2 billion, which is 5% less than the average. Ethereum's weekly trading volume was $18.3 billion, which is 18% less than the average, which is a much bigger drop.

Looking at things over a longer period of time, big cryptocurrency exchanges have processed a total of $652 billion in trades this month, which is 58% less than the same time last year. The overall amount of spot trades in March is expected to be around $920 billion. For the first three months of 2026, they will be around $3.2 trillion, which is 45% less than the first three months of 2025. The number is still about 20% lower than the $4 trillion that was traded in the first quarter of 2022. This means that even though that time was generally thought to be a weak market, market activity is still lower now.

Ethereum is more noteworthy: Gas fees have fallen to all-time lows

The rise in Ethereum（ETH） network fees directly shows how much people are using the blockchain. A drop in trade volume could mean that people are losing interest in trading. Ethereum gas fees were 0.12 Gwei this week, which is in the 17th percentile of its previous range. This means that network fees have been higher most of the time. This means that not only is buying in Ethereum (ETH) slow, but there is also less activity on the Ethereum blockchain as a whole. DApp interactions, DeFi activities, and NFT trades have all stopped.

Ethereum's situation is even worse than Bitcoin's. Trading volume in BTC is 5% lower than normal, but it's 18% lower for ETH, which is more than three times the difference. In a structural sense, this means that the altcoin market is much slower than what most news stories say. When the amount of even Ethereum, the second-largest asset by market capitalization, drops by that much, there is obviously no movement for sector shift.

Funding rates are rising, but the base is too low and the percentile remains low

The derivatives market's indications are a little inconsistent. This week, Bitcoin（BTC） financing rates jumped 4.1% to 1.5%, although they are still at the 13th percentile over the previous 12 months; futures open interest grew by $100 million to $21.5 billion, a little rise. This week, Ethereum's financing rates increased by 3.7% to 2.8%, which is likewise at the lowest 12th percentile over the previous 12 months; open interest jumped by $100 million to $11.8 billion.

Theoretically, a modest warming of bullish attitude should be indicated by the rise in rates along with a slight increase in open interest. The crucial point of comparison, though, is the percentiles; 13% and 12% correspond to almost 90% of the previous year when bullish wagers were more aggressive than they are presently. A small increase in rates from very low levels does not mean that the market is becoming optimistic; rather, it only means that the market is becoming a little less gloomy.

Based on what 10x Research has seen, there is one clear conclusion: trade volume is at an all-time low, on-chain utilization is low, and even though funding rates have gone up, they are still very close to all-time lows. At the moment, the market is more of a "wait and see" mode than a "position to be established" mode. This silence is likely to last until a clear reason comes up.