Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On December 29, in the highly influential cryptocurrency community, trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio posted his outlook and expectations for the first quarter of 2025 on X, predicting that ETH will be 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 with WLF's large purchases in the Ethereum ecosystem); and the development status of the Base ecosystem. He then emphasized again that since Trump's election, the inflow of funds for Ethereum spot ETFs has undergone a 180-degree turnaround.
ETF fund trends: Is Ethereum more favored?
Eugene did not exaggerate, as SoSoValue data shows that since November 6, when Trump won the election, the inflow of funds for Ethereum spot ETFs has significantly increased, and the growth trend during the same period even exceeds that of Bitcoin spot ETFs.
Entering late December, this trend has become more pronounced.
SoSoValue data shows that during the last trading week (Eastern Time from December 23 to December 27), Ethereum spot ETFs had a net inflow of $349 million; while Bitcoin spot ETFs saw a net outflow of $388 million — this significant difference in fund movement may indicate better expectations for ETH in the future.
As of the time of publication, the official ETF inflow/outflow data for this Monday has not yet been fully released, but according to on-chain monitoring by Lookonchain, yesterday saw a net outflow of 3,000 BTC (approximately $275.59 million) from ten U.S. Bitcoin ETFs; while nine Ethereum ETFs had a net inflow of 16,359 ETH (approximately $54.33 million), and the trend seems to remain unchanged.
Trump Concept Family Bucket
In addition to the liquidity data of ETFs, another reason supporting the expectations for ETH lies in the continuous accumulation by the Trump family project WLFI.
In recent times, WLFI has successively purchased multiple Ethereum ecosystem tokens such as AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO, but the largest holding of this project remains ETH.
Although this is somewhat related to the fact that WiFi itself is deployed in the Ethereum ecosystem, a phrase like "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 historical context of U.S. elections and Bitcoin halving cycles, ETH performed best in the first quarter of the new year, 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 gains 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 Choices: 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 only representative examples of specific sectors and concepts, and do not constitute investment advice.
Opposing viewpoints
Although several well-known investors/traders, including Eugene, have clearly shown a bullish outlook on ETH, there are also voices holding a pessimistic view on 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 reach new historical highs in the 'hawkish' macro environment of 2025: 'We expect a more conservative outlook for ETH in 2025. Unlike previous years, the initial hawkish policies may be tested by the weakening of liquidity tailwinds.'
During this period of intense market volatility, the predictions made by various parties are merely 'one-sided conclusions' based on their respective attention conditions and indicators. No one can predict the future, so remember to DYOR before taking action.
