Prices as of August 26, 2026, 5:30 p.m. ET. Record compiled from 14 dated sources; see the sourced record file for every citation.
Ethereum is trading at $2,495 as of 5:29 p.m. ET on August 26, 2026, per CoinGecko, up 2.7 percent on the day and 28 percent over the past 30 days. That is the price. The question most people typing "ethereum price" actually want answered is where it goes from here, and the market with real money on it has moved fast: on Kalshi, where a price in cents is a probability, the contract that pays if ETH trades above $3,500 at any point before January 1, 2027, a new 2026 high, is 28 cents, about a 28 percent chance. On August 18 it was 11 cents.
The repricing has one date on it. On August 19 the Treasury Department said it would at least double its buybacks of long-dated bonds, yields fell, and ETH jumped 18.5 percent in a single day; CoinGlass data reported by Bloomingbit showed $736.5 million of short positions liquidated in four hours. The next day the spot Ethereum ETFs took in about $221 million, "Ethereum's strongest single day since October 2025" per Cryptonews, and the week of August 17 to 21 finished at $697 million of inflows, a 2026 high, per SoSoValue figures reported by Incrypted.
The biggest single trade of the week, though, was a bet against all of it: 3,000 contracts at 30 cents on the night of August 21, with the buyer on the NO side, paying 70 cents a contract, about $2,100, to say Ethereum does not see $3,500 this year. The price held anyway. That tension, a market that has tripled its odds while the largest prints lean the other way, is the whole story of the board below.
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The Board
As of August 26, 2026, 5:30 p.m. ET (Kalshi, cents = probability):
| Outcome | Yes price (bid/ask) | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Above $3,500 before 2027 (a new 2026 high) | 27¢ / 28¢ | about 28% |
| Above $4,000 before 2027 | 20¢ / 21¢ | about 21% |
| Above $5,000 before 2027 (roughly the August 2025 record) | 10¢ / 11¢ | about 11% |
| Above $6,000 before 2027 (a new all-time high) | 5¢ / 6¢ | about 6% |
Each contract settles YES if the CF Ethereum Real-Time Index, using a trimmed mean that drops the top and bottom 20 percent of minute-by-minute prints, is above the level at any point before midnight ET on January 1, 2027; a single wick does not do it, and none of the eight rungs has been touched, because ETH's 2026 high is about $3,400 from mid-January. The $3,500 rung sat at 16 to 17 cents in late July, drifted to 11 cents by August 15 to 18 while ETH sat near $1,900, then went 12 to 21 cents on August 19 on 10,691 contracts, 25 cents on August 20, and 29 cents on August 21 on 26,867 contracts, the busiest day in the 30-day window, with a 14-to-34-cent intraday range. It closed at 33 cents on August 24, its high-water mark, and is 27 bid, 28 ask tonight, with 1,385 contracts traded in the past 24 hours and 121,399 open. The three prints that matter: 3,475 contracts sold straight through the book at 14 cents at 4:47 p.m. ET on August 21, the day's low; the 3,000 at 30 cents on the NO side at 10:41 p.m. ET the same night; and a one-minute burst at 8:23 a.m. ET on August 24 of roughly 4,500 contracts buying YES on the $6,000 rung at 5 and 6 cents, a bet on a new all-time high with about $250 at risk. Over the past seven days, 28,553 of the $3,500 rung's 36,684 crossed-the-spread contracts were on the NO side against 8,131 on YES, and the price still did not break. The separate year-end board, which asks where ETH finishes rather than how high it reaches, makes $2,500 to $2,749.99 the single likeliest band at 12 to 15.5 cents; the bands from $3,500 up add to roughly 13 to 15 percent.
What the Models Think
We also put the question to our panel of forecasting programs, which we grade in public against real settlements, without showing them the price, only the sourced record below. Three of the panel's eight seats ran this board. Their middle answer put a new 2026 high above $3,500 before January 1, 2027 at 31%, a shade above the 28-cent market, and the widest gap between any two of them was 2 points. The reason, in plain words: Ethereum needs roughly a 40 percent rally to a level it has not seen since January, with four months to do it; the August momentum, the ETF money and cheaper long-term borrowing make that live, but a Fed that is still weighing a hike and a foundation that is still bleeding senior people cap it near one-in-three. One model, on the August 19 squeeze that started the move: "that kind of move is real but mean-reverting." All three named the same thing that would change their number: a sustained breakout above the January high near $3,400 on higher lows, rather than another short squeeze, and the same thing that would kill it, a fade at the $3,000 round number. The market has real money behind it. The panel has only the record. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
How Eight Days Turned Eleven Cents Into Twenty-Eight
The move started in the bond market, not the crypto market. On August 19 the Treasury announced it would at least double its liquidity-support buybacks of long-dated bonds, from about $2 billion to at least $4 billion per operation, in the 10-to-20-year and 20-to-30-year sectors, effective September 9 through November 4, per CNBC; the 30-year yield fell 7.8 basis points to 5.207 percent on the day. Cheaper long money is the oldest tailwind crypto has, and the reaction was immediate. Bloomingbit's August 19 report, citing CoinGlass, had total liquidations of $802.98 million over four hours, 92 percent of them shorts, and quoted Wu Blockchain: "Ethereum on Binance briefly rose past $2,300 and was recently trading around $2,265." By CoinGecko's daily closes ETH went from $1,915 on August 19 to $2,254 on August 20 and $2,519 on August 22.
Then the ETF money confirmed it. Cryptonews put the August 20 net inflow at about $221 million, with BlackRock's ETHA taking roughly $173 million of it, on the fourth straight day of inflows, and noted the context that matters: "combined outflows exceeded $1 billion during May and June." The August 17 to 21 week's $697.18 million was the best of 2026, with ETHA at $536.83 million and Fidelity's FETH at $56.22 million. Bitcoin cleared $80,000 on August 25 for the first time since May, per Forbes, which had ETH at $2,503 and up more than 30 percent on the week, and which also carried President Trump's pitch to crypto executives at the White House: "We need Congress to take the next step by passing the CLARITY Act, a fair version of the CLARITY Act…It's a very, very powerful structured legislation which will keep us ahead of China, keep us ahead of everyone else." Our Bitcoin end-of-2026 board and the Bitcoin year-end band verdict track the same squeeze from the Bitcoin side.
Wall Street's year-end numbers were written before any of this. CoinGecko's April roundup has Standard Chartered's Geoff Kendrick at $7,500 for end-2026, Citi at $3,175 on a 12-month view with a $4,488 bull case, and Fundstrat's internal call at $4,500 after a first-half drawdown to $1,800 to $2,000 that did in fact happen. In 24/7 Wall St.'s May 21 piece, Standard Chartered named "the CLARITY Act passage as the key upside trigger." Set those against the board: even Citi's base number, the lowest of the three, sits in a year-end band the market gives about 8 cents. A new high above $3,500, the question this page answers, is a 40 percent move from tonight's price with 127 days to make it. If you are new to reading a contract price, how prediction markets work covers the mechanics in plain English, and the how-low-will-Ethereum-fall board is the mirror image of this one: the market gives "below $1,500 at some point in 2026" 26 to 27 cents, almost exactly what it gives "above $3,500."
The Foundation Exodus That Kept ETH Behind Bitcoin
The reason Ethereum needed a 31 percent month just to get back to $2,500 is documented, and it has names on it. Tomasz Stańczak announced in February that he would leave his co-executive director role at the Ethereum Foundation, per CoinDesk on February 13. On June 18 the other co-executive director, Hsiao-Wei Wang, resigned from the role and the board after nine years, saying her sabbatical "gave me space to reflect on my priorities and the kind of life I want to build next," per The Defiant, which counted "at least eight senior figures" gone in five months, including Josh Stark and Trent Van Epps in April, and reported Van Epps's estimate of a $30 million annual funding gap for client teams and research groups. Board member Bastian Aue took a larger interim role. Vitalik Buterin called the job "perhaps the most challenging position in the Ethereum Foundation, at one of the most challenging times for Ethereum."
Buterin's own selling ran alongside it. Arkham Research tracked 17,196 ETH, about $35 million, sold in February through small on-chain batches, roughly 7 percent of his holdings, which he framed as his "own share of the austerity" during the downturn, with proceeds going to open-source work and charity. Fortune's August 26 price note still lists "Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin selling millions of dollars worth of ETH" among the causes of the early-2026 decline, alongside recession fears. The result showed up in the relative chart: on June 16, with ETH at $1,803, Investing.com's Itai Smidt had Ethereum 60 percent below its $4,946 record against Bitcoin's 48 percent drawdown, and wrote: "When the leader is down 48% and the second-largest asset is down 60%, the market is telling you something about relative conviction." The lowest daily close of the year came ten days later, $1,566 on June 26. On August 17, developers pushed the Glamsterdam upgrade, Ethereum's next major fork, from the first half of 2026 to the fourth quarter, per Bloomingbit, launching a public testnet at the same time. None of that has been resolved by a good month; it is the counterweight to every bull case above, and it is why the biggest prints on the board still lean NO.
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What Moves The Price From Here
August 28, 2026, 10:00 a.m. ET: Kevin Warsh at Jackson Hole. The new Fed chair's first symposium speech, per Regards of Wall Street's preview, comes two days after July PCE printed 3.7 percent headline and 3.3 percent core. Kalshi's September 16 meeting board prices a hold at 66 to 67 cents and a quarter-point hike at 32 to 33 cents. A speech that leaves the hike on the table pushes the $3,500 rung down; one that calls the cycle finished does the opposite, because the whole August move was a bet on cheaper money.
September 14 to 15, 2026: the Senate returns and the CLARITY Act gets its procedural vote. Majority Leader John Thune, per Cryptopolitan: "The Dems are insistent on no Clarity vote. I worked with sponsors of the bill. Senator Lummis was great, and we're getting that queued up first thing when we come back." Standard Chartered's $7,500 case is built on passage; a failed cloture vote is the cleanest single reason for the rung to give back its August gains.
Fourth quarter 2026: Glamsterdam on mainnet, and the clock. The upgrade's testnets are scheduled through September and October, with mainnet targeted for the fourth quarter. A clean activation is the last scheduled catalyst that could carry ETH toward its January high; a slip is the last scheduled reason it does not. Every rung on this board needs the index to trade above its level at least once before the year ends. This one settles on December 31, 2026, with the last print of the year.
Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. Ethereum coin photo by Ivan Radic, licensed CC BY 2.0; photos cropped, toned, and composited.
Prices quoted are live Kalshi market prices as of August 26, 2026, 5:30 p.m. ET, and will keep moving until this market settles after the December 31, 2026 close. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state). OddsShopper covers prediction markets as an independent analyst: any model or panel figures referenced are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. This article does not advocate for or against any candidate or party. Trading involves risk; contracts can go to zero.
