A streak of inflows into U.S.-listed spot ether (<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/price/ethereum/ " target="_blank">ETH</a>) exchange-traded funds (ETFs), rising activity on the Ethereum blockchain and increased institutional trading interest could help the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap surpass its three-year-old price record in the coming months.
“ETH spot ETFs continue to record strong net inflows, totaling $90.1 million yesterday and marking a 4-day winning streak," QCP Capital said in a note referring to Wednesday trading. "Despite this week's retracement, these healthy inflows highlight the market's growing optimism. ETH was the main outperformer Wednesday as it rallied 11.65% to a high of 3,688. This is aligned with our thesis of capital rotation from BTC to ETH."
The ether ETFs attracted over $220 million in the Nov. 22-27 period, data shows, the second-longest streak of inflows since they went live in July. That has helped bring cumulative flows to a positive $240 million.
“Given that ETH has lagged behind BTC and SOL in the current rally, its recent strength supports the case for it to retest its all-time high of 4,868 (+35.4%),” QCP said.
Fundamental factors and money flows are further boosting ether’s growth prospects.
A <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">CoinDesk analysis</a> earlier this week noted that cumulative open interest in perpetual and standard futures contracts has surged to a record 6.32 million ETH, worth over $27 billion.
Activity in the ether options market listed on Deribit is also picking up, with over 2 million contracts active or open at press time, the most since late June.
Other data shows a jump in revenue, fees, new wallets and Ethereum blockchain volumes, with the past month registering elevated levels of activity compared with the period from May to September.
<a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoin/tether" target="_blank">Stablecoin data</a> further shows that Ethereum has more USDT hosted than Tron, with $60.3 billion on Ethereum versus $57.94 billion on Tron, the first time that's happened since June 2022.
