Ethereum Surpasses Bitcoin with ETF Inflows Exceeding $1.2 Billion During Market Slowdown

Ethereum’s capacity to attract institutional interest and funding is supporting market sentiment, even as the broader crypto landscape shifts in late-summer trading.

Over the past 30 days, the second-largest cryptocurrency has increased by more than 17%, contrasting with Bitcoin’s negative return of 5.5%, according to CoinGecko data.

This follows an impressive run earlier this week, where Ethereum reached $4,945, marking its all-time high price on Sunday.

“Ethereum presents a compelling growth narrative,” Xu Han, director of Liquid Fund at HashKey Capital, conveyed to Decrypt. He noted the significance of deflationary tokenomics following the Merge, scalability trends through Layer-2 adoption, and an incentivized staking system.

Regarding staking, Ethereum deployed for staking activities has continued to rise, hitting a record of 35,750 ETH, valued at approximately $169 million, on August 2, based on data from Beaconchain.

While this number has mostly stabilized in recent weeks, combined structural advantages and its position as the foundation for DeFi and tokenization continue to draw institutional investments into Ethereum ETFs, Han remarked.

As of August, there have been no Ethereum staking ETFs approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the U.S., although some entities, including digital asset manager BlackRock, are optimistic about potential changes.

Nevertheless, focus remains on spot-based products, as Ethereum ETFs are now recovering after experiencing outflows amounting to $237.7 million from August 15 to August 20.

As of this week, Ethereum ETFs have attracted over $1.2 billion in inflows through Thursday, according to SoSoValue data.

In other market developments, Solana has started to outstrip its competitors with a 7% gain noted since mid-August, coinciding with a 31% increase in Solana’s DEX volume to $5.10 billion over the past week, according to DeFiLlama.

However, it is encountering its own challenges, as retail traders on Solana-based decentralized exchanges have shifted away from speculative meme coin trading, resulting in a decrease in the daily DEX trader count.