Although Ethereum (ETH) is still up approximately 80% over the past three months, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap appears to have lost its momentum lately, down 0.6% over the past month.
According to a CryptoQuant Quicktake post by contributor Arab Chain, Ethereum trading on Binance during September 2025 is witnessing a period of relative calm compared to other months. Notably, there has been a decline in the imbalance between ETH spot and perpetual volumes.
The CryptoQuant contributor brought attention to ETH’s Z-score, which has oscillated between 0.0 and -1.0 for most of September. Such a Z-score typically signifies the asset trading in a neutral zone, with a slight tilt toward the spot market.
For the uninitiated, a Z-score measures how far a data point is from the mean, expressed in units of standard deviation. In trading, it’s used to identify whether a value – like volume or price – is unusually high or low compared to its historical average.
In essence, ETH’s current Z-score means that perpetual contracts are slowly losing their dominance in trading volume. This could be due to multiple reasons, such as speculators exiting the market or due to increased dependence on real buy/sell orders from actual investors.
The decline in perpetual trading volume is significant compared to the period between June and August. As a result, the appetite for leveraged speculation has dwindled too, a sign of growing caution in the market. Arab Chain added:
Despite this decline, the spot market also showed limited strength, reflecting a general lack of investor engagement. Spot volume remained below the 500K–1M range, which is significantly lower than the peaks recorded in July and June.
The analyst cautioned that although the lack of strong imbalances between the spot and perpetual markets may seem positive at first, it could also mean there is heightened uncertainty and stagnation pertaining to the direction of ETH’s price.
