After getting approval from the SEC on Monday, nine spot Ethereum ETFs started trading on the US stock market on Tuesday. This was a big step forward for the crypto industry.
A senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, James Seyffart, called the ETF launch a “pretty big success,” even though the initial excitement was tempered by the stark difference to Bitcoin’s ETF debut earlier this year, which saw $655 million flow into the fund on its first trading day.
The assets of the new Ethereum ETFs added up to $10.24 billion, and trade volume went over $1.1 billion on the first day. With $469.7 million, Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) had the most trades.
Ethereum Price Stability
With $266 million coming in, BlackRock was the clear leader. Bitwise came in second with $204 million, and Fidelity came in third with $71 million. Bloomberg data shows that even with these numbers, net entries for the ETFs were only $107 million, which was less than the $484 million that left Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust.
Ethereum’s price didn’t change much after the ETF launched; it’s gone down 0.8% since trade started. Ethereum is trading at $3,420 right now. Its trade volume has dropped 27%, or $16 billion, in the last 24 hours, but its price hasn’t changed much.
It was kind of assumed that ETH would get less money because its market cap is so small compared to Bitcoin’s. Also, because the ETFs don’t have a staking function, which the SEC doesn’t allow, some investors bought ETH directly instead of using the new ETF system.
Grayscale’s higher 2.5% fee compared to competitors’ fees of 0.25% or less also caused funds to leave ETHE.Even though the market didn’t react very strongly, Seyffart is still optimistic about ETH ETFs. He points out the good performance of smaller players like 21 Shares’ Core Ethereum ETF, which brought in $8.7 million.
Looking ahead, the success of Bitcoin ETFs, which caused the price of Bitcoin to reach an all-time high of $73,700 just two months after they were approved, suggests that the price of Ethereum may also go up in the long term, even if ETH ETFs don’t get as much instant investment and trading activity.
