Price unavailable — showing last known.
August 19, 2026, ~12:06pm ET
The year-end Ethereum ladder is not pricing a moonshot. The most traded band is $2,000 to $2,249.99 at about 13%, with neighboring buckets close behind — a market that looks like a contest over whether ETH finishes the year near today’s CF Benchmarks print.
You’re betting on which dollar band Ethereum finishes in at the end of 2026. Kalshi uses CF Benchmarks’ ETHUSD_RTI: the simple average of the sixty one-second prints before midnight Eastern on January 1, 2027. Only the matching band gets paid.
| Your bet | Chance | Wins if… | $100 bet pays |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2,000–2,249.99 | 13% | year-end ETHUSD_RTI average lands in this band | ~$731 |
| 1,750–1,999.99 | 12% | year-end ETHUSD_RTI average lands in this band | ~$785 |
| 1,500–1,749.99 | 12% | year-end ETHUSD_RTI average lands in this band | ~$754 |
| 999.99 or below | 11% | year-end ETHUSD_RTI average is 999.99 or lower | ~$880 |
| 2,250–2,499.99 | 8% | year-end ETHUSD_RTI average lands in this band | ~$1,220 |
| 2,500–2,749.99 | 8% | year-end ETHUSD_RTI average lands in this band | ~$1,236 |
Other listed bands stay live. If the year-end average falls in a band outside this table, that side pays and the rows above lose.
The case for 2,000 to 2,249.99. CF Benchmarks showed ETHUSD_RTI near $2,094 on August 19, 2026. The leading bucket sits just above that print. The case is mean-reversion and range: traders see a decent chance the year ends within a few hundred dollars of where ETH trades today. The seven-day lift from about 10% to 13% is the market putting a little more weight on that “near here” outcome.
The case for 1,750 to 1,999.99. The runner-up bucket is 12% and slipped from about 15% over seven days. It is the soft-landing band just under spot. If ETH drifts lower into year-end without a collapse, this is the row that pays. The week’s shift from this band toward the $2,000–$2,249.99 row is the clearest local reallocation on the ladder.
The rest of the ladder. The $1,500–$1,749.99 band and the “999.99 or below” crash bucket both sit near 10–12%. Higher bands at $2,250–$2,749.99 are 8% each. Lifetime volume on the event is large; today’s 24-hour tape is thin, so single-session prints can look jumpy relative to the stock of trading already done.
A 13% favorite bucket next to a 12% runner-up means the year-end question is still wide open. Stack the top four bands and you still leave a large share of outcomes across the rest of the ladder. That is what a four-and-a-half-month horizon looks like when the settlement rule is a one-minute average at midnight.
The useful rethink fact is the settlement source itself. CF Benchmarks publishes ETHUSD_RTI as the CME CF Ether-Dollar Real Time Index and notes it as the price input for Kalshi event contracts. Spot screens on retail apps can disagree by a few dollars; this market does not care about those screens. It cares about that index average at the deadline.
3 reasons the leading 13% bucket can still move:
ETHUSD_RTI relative to the $2,000 line. Macro weeks that usually swing crypto. Any sustained move into the $1,500s or above $2,500 that forces the ladder to re-center.