Ether Rises Above $3.5K Ahead of ETH ETF Trading, but Inflow Concerns Remain

Ether (ETH) jumped above $3,500 ahead of the spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are expected to go live for trading on Tuesday, one that some onlookers say could see muted inflows in their first few weeks.

“Market participants are also closely monitoring Grayscale’s US$9 billion ETH Trust, as there are concerns that Grayscale’s potential selling pressure could counteract the positive effects of the new inflows, potentially exerting downward pressure on the market,” wrote Vivien Wong, partner at HashKey Capital’s Liquid Funds, in a Tuesday email to CoinDesk.

Wong’s HashKey helped launch one of the Ether ETFs in Hong Kong. It estimates that inflow will hit $3 billion in the first six months of trading in the U.S., citing bitcoin’s market cap being 30% of Ether’s and the lack of staking.

Ether’s inflation rate, which increases token supply in the open market, is also a point of concern.

“Over the past month, the ETH supply increased by around approximately 60k ETH, contrary to expectations,” Wong said. “While the ETH supply has decreased by approximately 300k ETH since the merge, continued inflation at this rate could negate this reduction within six months, potentially turning ETH into an inflationary asset again.”

ETH reversed losses from Monday’s trading session to gain 0.57% in the past 24 hours, CoinGecko data shows, outperforming the broad-based CoinDesk 20 (CD20) index, which fell 1.7%.

Eight issuers, including BlackRock, received approval for their latest S-1 filings from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

Market onlookers are debating if the ETFs could mirror the performance of their bitcoin counterparts, which were issued in January and have since attracted over $17 billion in net inflows.

“The leading question is will ETH ETFs do better than Bitcoin ETFs? In technicality, Ethereum has more utility than Bitcoin with features like liquid staking,” shared Danny Chong, co-founder of Tranchess, in an email to CoinDesk. “ETH ETFs were slow to live up to the industry’s expectations when launched in Hong Kong.”

“However, I do believe that with a larger investor base, ETH ETFs should be able to perform better and bring in the liquidity we require,” Chong added.

Citi wrote earlier this month that it expects approximately $5.4 billion in inflow within the first half-year, citing the lack of staking and Bitcoin’s first-mover advantage as to why it will underwhelm. Gemini puts the number at $5 billion, while JPMorgan estimates “as much as $3 billion” but as high as $6 billion if staking was allowed.