
Author: Jack Inabinet, Bankless; Compilation: Baishui, Bitchain Vision
Sharp-eyed Bitcoin holders have long insisted that the assets they choose are the only cryptocurrency institutions are willing to buy.With the emergence of spot ETH ETFs, will TradFi find a better alternative soon?
Michael Saylor, a long-time Bitcoin holder and founder of MicroStrategy, had previously refused to accept Ethereum on the grounds that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would declare it (and all non-BTC tokens) as crypto-asset securities.
Unfortunately for Saylor,The spot ETH ETF is about to be approved, which opens the door to the future listing of any spot ETF for crypto assets that meet the fuzzy definition of commodities, eliminating BTC’s monopoly on TradFi access and forcing it to compete with other crypto assets in the free market for capital.
Although many believe that Bitcoin will be the only digital asset to be accepted by the public, Ethereum remains highly attractive to institutional participants due to the practicality of the network and the existence of similar attributes.
More than six well-known financiers praised Ethereum and its supported use cases, and many asset managers have launched their own tokenization experiments to gain first-hand experience with Ethereum L1!
Assuming spot ETH ETF is approved tomorrow, TradFi institutions will eventually get the tools they need to monetize their support for Ethereum, which may force them to adopt more Ethereum native blockchain technology and promote Ethereum to external capital..
The daily trading volume of existing commodity futures-based Ethereum ETFs hit record highs twice this week, with trading volume reaching $47.8 million on Tuesday, up 40% from the all-time high set on the previous day and up from last week’s peak7 times.
Compared to the trillions of dollars in trading volumes that spot BTC ETFs process daily, Ethereum futures ETFs may pale in comparison, but not far from the volume of BTC futures ETFs that have fluctuated around the $200 million mark in recent weeks.
Although the growth in ETH futures ETF volumes is indeed impressive after adjusting by percentage, it is worth noting that they simply rebounded from a sluggish level of only a few million dollars in daily trading volume.
Leading Bitcoin Futures ETF BITO always processed over $500 million in volume before obtaining spot BTC ETF approval and achieved nearly $2 billion in volume the day before the major activity;The gap between the pre-issuance statistics of BTC and ETH spot ETFs clearly shows that TradFi participants are not as enthusiastic about speculating on the issuance of ETH ETFs spot as they were when BTC spot was first released.
While there is a relatively lack of enthusiasm for Ethereum ahead of tomorrow’s first final spot ETF decision deadline, overwhelming denial sentiment entering this week could tire the bulls of the deal…
Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) has accumulated over $10B of ETH and will be redeemable after conversion to spot ETH ETF.The selling pressure from ETHE redemption may suppress prices in the short term, just like the impact on Bitcoin after GBTC unlocked in January, but many analysts are still optimistic about the future trajectory of ETH prices.
Asset management firm Bernstein claims the approval of the spot ETF will push Ethereum price to $6,600, while multinational bank Standard Chartered reiterated its year-end target of $8,000.