U.S. spot Ethereum ETF continues to see capital inflows. On August 28th, such products recorded a daily net inflow of $225.8 million, reaching a new high in nearly 10 months, and extended the consecutive days of net inflows to 9 trading days, with a total capital attraction of $1.42 billion.
BlackRock has the highest proportion of funds
In this round of buying, ETHA under BlackRock almost took the lead. Data shows that ETHA absorbed approximately $1.02 billion in 9 days, accounting for about 72% of all capital inflows. By August 28th, the daily inflow gap between Bitcoin ETF and Ethereum ETF had narrowed to $16.5 million.
In terms of pace, the inflow significantly accelerated in the latter half of this round. On August 28th, aside from ETHA, Fidelity's FETH saw a single-day net inflow of 56.2 million US dollars, while BlackRock's another Ethereum-based product, ETHB, had a net inflow of 20.7 million US dollars. However, its sustainability was still not as strong as that of ETHA.
Price increases have not kept up with the influx of capital.
Despite ETF continuously drawing in funds, the performance of Ethereum's price has not been strong. Data from the article shows that over these 9 days, Ethereum's price rose from approximately $2350 to $2477, an increase of about 5%, which is significantly lower than the performance of some other mainstream cryptocurrencies during the same period.
The article argues that this indicates that the current inflow is more likely a result of institutions gradually increasing their holdings according to predetermined ratios, rather than a concentrated bet on Ethereum outperforming the market in the short term. Funds are indeed entering the market, but they come more from the need for portfolio diversification rather than from directional trades with a strong bias.
Spot transactions have slowed down.
Another signal worth noting is that the inflow of funds into ETF has not correlated with increased activity in the spot market. Since the start of this upward trend on August 19th, the trading volume of Ethereum spot contracts has fallen to a lower percentile of the year, and the market has begun to wonder whether reliance solely on ETF subscriptions is sufficient to continue supporting price momentum.
It was mentioned in the text that on August 19, the U.S. Treasury Department announced that it would double the scale of its long-term government bond repurchase operations starting from September 9. This news pushed down long-term interest rates and weakened the dollar, which also led to a rebound in demand for risky assets. However, Ethereum did not experience as rapid an increase in value as some other assets.
