Eight spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds will launch in just a few hours and unleash a wave of intense trading, market watchers say.
Institutional investors will pour $500 million into Ethereum ETFs over the first week of trading, according to analysis by crypto exchange OKX.
“It’s probably just as, if not more, important as the Bitcoin ETF approval,” Lennix Lai, OKX’s global chief commercial officer, recently told DL News.
Other industry reps have echoed his sentiment, saying the launch could unleash a crypto rally similar to the one spot Bitcoin ETFs triggered in January.
The launch comes after the US Securities and Exchange Commission gave issuers the final signoff on Monday.
The regulator allowed registration forms from 21Shares, Bitwise, BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, VanEck and Invesco Galaxy to go effective.
Registration forms for the Grayscale Ethereum Trust and the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust also got a nod on Monday.
$15 billion
Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, which has issued one of the new spot Ethereum ETFs, said the launch is just to preamble to the $15 billion that will flood into these funds over the next 18 months.
He has also predicted that Ethereum will beat its previous all-time high and climb above $5,000 soon after the ETFs launch.
To be sure, not everyone shares that optimism.
Crypto market maker Wintermute, for instance, wrote in a Monday report that it only expects the price of Ether to rise between 18% and 24%.
While that would bring the second-largest cryptocurrency to a new 2024 high of $4,200, that’s still below its 2021 all-time high of $4,800.
Wintermute said it expects Ethereum ETFs to garner somewhere between $3.2 billion and $4 billion in assets within their first year.
“This conservative estimate is influenced by the absence of a staking mechanism, which could diminish Ethereum’s attractiveness as an ETF investment vehicle,” Wintermute said in the report.
Still, in the long term: “The potential approval of Ethereum to be traded as a proxy under a traditional framework could bring about the next wave of institutional demand,” Lai said.
Crypto market movers
Bitcoin is down 1.8% over the past 24 hours to trade at $66,477.
Ethereum is down 0.4% to trade at $3,491.
What we’re reading
Bears can now short Bitcoin in Hong Kong with new ‘inverse’ ETFs — DL News
BlackRock’s Spot Bitcoin ETF Records $526 Million in Inflows — Unchained
Bitwise to donate 10% of spot Ethereum ETF profits to open-source developers— The Block
Wallet Tied to US Government Moves Nearly $4 Million in Bitcoin to Coinbase — Unchained
As Biden bows out, industry hopes Harris will pick crypto-friendly running mate — DL News
Eric Johansson is DL News’ News Editor. Got at tip? Email at eric@dlnews.com.
