Written by: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
On December 29, in a highly influential cryptocurrency community, trader Eugene Ng Ah Sio published the 2025 Q1 outlook and expectations 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 WLF's large 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 Flow: Is Ethereum More Favorable?
Eugene did not exaggerate; SoSoValue data shows that since Trump's victory on November 6, the inflow of funds into Ethereum spot ETFs has increased significantly, and the growth trend even surpasses that of Bitcoin spot ETFs during the same period.
Entering late December, this trend has become even more apparent.
SoSoValue data shows that last week (Eastern Time from December 23 to December 27), the Ethereum spot ETF had a net inflow of $349 million; meanwhile, the Bitcoin spot ETF had a net outflow of $388 million — this significant difference in fund flows 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 Lookonchain's on-chain monitoring, 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 unchanged.
Trump Concept Family Pack
Aside from the liquidity data of ETFs, another reason supporting ETH's expectations is the continuous 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 of 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 be repeated?
Coinglass data shows that in the first quarter of the new year after historical U.S. elections and Bitcoin halving cycles, ETH performs best, especially in Q1 2017 and Q1 2021, where ETH rose by 518% and 161%, respectively, even surpassing BTC's returns in these two quarters (11.9%, 103.2%).
If history repeats itself, ETH may see significant gains in Q1 next year.
Potential Beta Choices
If ETH really can rise as expected, some Ethereum ecosystem tokens may become higher risk/reward Beta choices, such as:
Trump Concept Coin Combination: AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO;
Grayscale Top 20 Selection: LINK, UNI, AAVE, ENA, OP, LDO;
ETF Staking Expectations Potential Benefits: LDO, EIGEN, RPL, SSV;
Top AI Concepts in the Ethereum Ecosystem: VIRTUAL, GAME, AIXBT;
Odaily Note: The above tokens are only examples of specific sectors and concepts and do not constitute investment advice.
Opposing Viewpoints
Although several well-known investors/traders, including Eugene, have openly expressed bullish views on ETH, there are also voices holding a pessimistic attitude toward 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 face challenges from weakening liquidity tailwinds.'
During this period of extreme market volatility, predictions given by various parties are merely based on their respective focused conditions and indicators, resulting in 'one-sided conclusions'. No one can predict the future; everyone should remember to DYOR before taking action.
