U.S. spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds had a varied start this week, with most ETFs experiencing net inflows, except for Grayscale’s ETHE, which saw significant net outflows.
According to data from Farside Investors, spot Ethereum ETFs had over $162 million in total outflows on Friday, July 26, marking the third consecutive day of negative flows. In contrast, spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $51.8 million in net inflows on the same day, continuing a positive trend for three days in a row.
The first-ever U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs, consisting of nine products from eight issuers, began trading on Tuesday, July 23, after approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission in May. In the first week of trading, most Ethereum ETFs saw positive inflows, except for Grayscale’s ETHE, which experienced $1.51 billion in net outflows. This resulted in a total weekly outflow of $341.8 million for Ethereum ETFs.
Among the Ethereum ETFs, BlackRock’s ETHA had the highest inflows, totaling $442 million, followed by Bitwise’s ETHW with $265.9 million and Fidelity’s FETH with $219.4 million. VanEck’s ETHV and Franklin Templeton’s EZET saw smaller inflows, while 21Shares’s CETH had an inflow of $7.5 million on launch day.
Grayscale introduced two spot Ethereum funds to the market last week: ETHE and ETH. ETHE was initially launched in 2017 as a private placement, later becoming publicly traded OTC under the ticker ETHE. The recent conversion of ETHE to a spot Ethereum ETF allowed for more flexibility in selling holdings. However, its 2.5% management fee, higher than other ETF issuers, led investors to seek products with lower fees, resulting in significant outflows from the fund.
Grayscale’s new ETF product, Ethereum Mini Trust (ETH), with a competitive fee of 0.15%, saw inflows every trading day last week, totaling $164 million. ETHE’s outflows, combined with a 6% drop in Ethereum’s price since the ETFs launched, reduced Grayscale Ethereum Trust’s assets under management to approximately $7.46 billion.
Comparing Ethereum ETFs to Bitcoin ETFs, Ethereum ETFs had total net inflows of $106.7 million on their first trading day, lower than Bitcoin ETFs’ $628 million inflows. Ethereum ETFs also had a total trading volume of around $4.05 billion in the first week, compared to $7.85 billion for Bitcoin ETFs.
Analysts predict that Ethereum ETFs will attract inflows ranging from 6% to 48% of those seen by Bitcoin ETFs in the first six months. This estimate suggests total inflows into Ethereum ETFs could reach between $1 trillion and $7.5 trillion by late January 2025.
At the time of writing, Ethereum (ETH) was trading at $3,280 with a market cap of around $393 billion and a 24-hour trading volume near $14.4 billion.
