Original title: (ETF fund flows may indicate future scenarios; is ETH finally going to take the baton from BTC?)
Original author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
On December 29, influential trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio in the cryptocurrency community published a projection and expectation for Q1 2025 on X, predicting that ETH will become the best-performing mainstream token in the next quarter.
Eugene first mentioned three reasons for being bullish on ETH: technical trends; Trump's favor (especially WLF's substantial purchases in the Ethereum ecosystem); the development status of the Base ecosystem. He then reiterated that since Trump's election, the inflow of funds into Ethereum spot ETFs has undergone a 180-degree turnaround.
ETF fund direction: Is Ethereum more favored?
Eugene did not exaggerate; SoSoValue data shows that since November 6, since Trump's victory, the inflow of funds into spot Ethereum ETFs has significantly increased, with the growth trend even surpassing that of Bitcoin spot ETFs during the same period.
As we enter late December, this trend has become more apparent.
SoSoValue data shows that for the trading days last week (Eastern Time, December 23 to December 27), Ethereum spot ETFs had a net inflow of $349 million; while during the same period, Bitcoin spot ETFs had a net outflow of $388 million—this significant difference in fund direction may indicate that ETH has better expectations for the future.
As of the time of writing, the official ETF inflow/outflow data for this Monday has not been fully released, but according to on-chain monitoring from Lookonchain, yesterday, ten U.S. Bitcoin ETFs had a net outflow of 3,000 BTC ($275.59 million); nine Ethereum ETFs had a net inflow of 16,359 ETH ($54.33 million), and the trend seems to remain unchanged.
Trump concept all-in-one
In addition to the ETF liquidity data, another reason supporting ETH expectations is the continued accumulation by Trump's family project WLFI.
In the past period, WLFI has successively purchased several Ethereum ecosystem tokens such as AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO, but the largest holding in the project remains ETH.
Although this is somewhat related to the fact that WIFI itself is deployed in the Ethereum ecosystem, the phrase 'The president is on board, what are you hesitating for?' still has a strong FOMO effect.
Looking back at historical data, will the script repeat?
Coinglass data shows that in the first quarter following historical U.S. elections and Bitcoin halving cycles, ETH performed the best, especially in the first quarters of 2017 and 2021, where ETH rose by 518% and 161%, respectively, even surpassing BTC's returns in those two quarters (11.9%, 103.2%).
If history repeats itself, ETH may see significant growth in Q1 of next year.
Potential Beta choices
If ETH can indeed rise as hoped, some Ethereum ecosystem tokens may become higher-risk/higher-reward Beta choices, such as:
· Trump concept coin combination: AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO;
· Grayscale Top 20 selections: LINK, UNI, AAVE, ENA, OP, LDO;
· Potential benefits from ETF staking expectations: LDO, EIGEN, RPL, SSV;
· Leading AI concepts in the Ethereum ecosystem: VIRTUAL, GAME, AIXBT;
Odaily Note: The above tokens are merely examples from specific sectors and concepts and do not constitute investment advice.
Counterpoint
Although several well-known investors/traders, including Eugene, are clearly bullish on ETH, there are also voices expressing pessimism about ETH's future performance.
Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, painted a more pessimistic scenario, predicting that ETH will continue to perform poorly and will not set a new historical high in a 'hawkish' macro environment in 2025: 'We expect a more conservative outlook for ETH in 2025. Unlike previous years, the initial hawkish policies may be tested by weakening liquidity tailwinds.
During a period of significant market volatility, the predictions made by various parties are merely 'one-sided conclusions' based on their respective conditions and indicators of interest. No one can predict the future, so remember to DYOR before taking action.
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