ETF Ethereum price today, ETF-ETH to USD live price,

How the ETF approval has affected the price of Bitcoin, the inflows and outflows from the Bitcoin ETF funds, and what we can expect from the Ethereum counterparts. We’ll cover the pros and cons of buying the ETF Ethereum from a traditional investing account versus buying ETH directly from a crypto exchange.

For the true crypto natives, we’ll also cover the top altcoins to watch in order to gain exposure to the renewed interest in the Ethereum ecosystem. Make sure to watch till the end, as I’ll also share my prediction on the price action of Ethereum shortly after the ETF starts trading.

Ethereum ETF Launch Date

A lot of people think the Ethereum ETF was approved a couple of months ago, and they think this has already been priced in, but this is not the case. You see, even though the US SEC approved the Ethereum ETF in May of this year, these approvals were actually one of two filings required before the ETFs started trading.

So even though the 19-B filings have been approved, which means the ETFs will for sure come to market, it still takes another approval for another filing called S-1 for each of the Ethereum ETFs before they can actually start trading.

Now, just last week, on July 8th, all eight issuers of Ethereum spot ETFs filed their S-1 filings, which usually means, around one to two weeks after that, the ETFs actually come to market and start trading. The earliest estimate from Bloomberg Analyst is July 18th for the ETFs to come to the market.

Starting later this month, there will be eight Ethereum ETFs available to buy, and these are from BlackRock, Fidelity, Bitwise, ARK Invest, VanEck, Invesco, Franklin Templeton, and Grayscale.

Now, we don’t know the exact fees for these funds yet. However, it’s very likely that seven out of eight of the issuers, except for Grayscale, will have a very similar low fee to their counterparts on Bitcoin, right around that 0.25% number.

So you are good to buy any of the seven that are available to you, except for Grayscale, because just like the Bitcoin Trust from Grayscale, which was later converted to the Bitcoin ETF, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust also has a much higher fee at 1.5%. So this is the only bad deal.

The Ethereum ETFs will also be offered at very similar brokerages in the US, like the Bitcoin ETFs. So right now, Fidelity, Robinhood, Charles Schwab, E-Trade, et cetera, all offer spot Bitcoin ETFs, and these will most likely have Ethereum ETFs as well.

ETF Ethereum vs Ethereum

Once the official tickers are live, just go on your favorite broker, like Robinhood, and search for your ticker name. Now, really quick, I want to give you some pros and cons of the Ethereum ETF versus buying real Ethereum. The benefit of buying the ETF is, number one, there’s no complex self-custody for a crypto beginner.

Number two, you have insurance on your funds because these are regulated. Number three, you do have exact exposure to Ethereum price since all the ETF shares need to have one-to-one value backing of real ETH coins. This is much better than before with Ethereum Futures Trust.

And number four, there are very good tax advantages with Roth IRA or 401k accounts or any retirement account that you may have. You can also invest those funds into Ethereum or even Bitcoin ETFs. On the other hand, the disadvantages of buying the ETF versus real Ethereum are that, number one, you don’t have real custody in case you are a crypto purist, or if you are worried about your freedom or bring your money anywhere you want to go with just your hardware wallet and a seed phrase, then you cannot do that with regulated fund structure that only exists in the US.

Number two, you have no staking income, so you’re giving up at least 4.4% of extra rewards per year. And number three, you don’t have any DeFi income from lending, liquidity provision, et cetera. So, I estimate the total opportunity costs, including staking and DeFi, is probably around 10% of the extra yield that you can get by buying real Ethereum and deploying it versus buying the ETF through a traditional broker.

ETF Inflows

let’s look at how these Ethereum ETFs can actually impact the price of Ethereum. Specifically, we need to look at the inflow-outflow estimates that institutions will get their money into Ethereum. So, is there any data that would suggest how much money will flow into Ethereum from these ETFs? The answer is yes. And Galaxy has done a very good research piece to size the market for the Ethereum ETF.

So, here’s a quick refresher: since the Bitcoin ETF launched on January 10th, there has been a large inflow of new money coming into these TradFi instruments for Bitcoin, specifically around 15 billion in total.

So, the basis of this research is using the inflow from institutions into the Bitcoin ETF and comparing that with the market size of Ethereum and the demand from institutions into Ethereum versus Bitcoin to determine roughly how big of an inflow we can expect over the next few months into Ethereum ETFs.

So first, why is this important really quick? Over the past six months, there has been a very positive correlation between the price of Bitcoin versus the aggregated ETF inflows.

You see, as the blue part started to rise, which is the total amount of money flowing into the Bitcoin ETFs, so did the price of Bitcoin, going from 40K all the way up to 70K.

The two are heavily correlated, which means the ETF demand is clearly driving the price of Bitcoin. What a surprise, right? More buying leads to higher prices. So here is a table comparing the demand for Bitcoin and Ethereum across a few different metrics. Number one, we have the market cap.

So, Bitcoin currently trades at around 3X the market cap of Ethereum. And then it’s also important because we’re dealing with ETFs, which are institutional investment products. We need to look at the futures products in the US and the fund structures in the US.

So across all of these numbers, Galaxy has done the research comparing essentially the total amount of money that’s deployed into these institutional products that have existed for a very long time in Bitcoin and in Ethereum to determine how many institutions are looking to deploy how much money into Bitcoin and Ethereum and figuring out a ratio.

You see, these ratios range from as low as 12% of money deployed in Ethereum versus Bitcoin to as high as 57% with, for example, futures trading volume. And at the end here, you have some averages. So, the average of all the futures trading is around 52% of demand in Ethereum versus Bitcoin. And the average ratio of funds in Ethereum versus Bitcoin is at 26%.

Then, you take the overall average of all the metrics here, and you have the total demand. So, the overall average demand for Ethereum versus Bitcoin is around 31%, which means the market size of institutional demand for Bitcoin versus Ethereum is about three times larger. With that number, we can make some estimates because we know there has been $15 billion in inflow coming into Bitcoin from US institutions over the last five months.

That’s annualized at 35 billion per year, and taking Bitcoin to Ethereum, the demand ratio of three gives us 11.8 billion net inflow per year, which is roughly $1 billion of money coming into Ethereum ETFs per month. Honestly, I really like this approach. It seems very practical and gives a real number that we can expect for the amount of money to flow into Ethereum, which we can use as a benchmark and monitor what actually happens when these launch.

Now, I don’t think this necessarily means Ethereum will see a price increase straight up from the ETF starting trading because even on the chart of Bitcoin, we also saw an initial dip period mainly because of the outflows coming out of Grayscale. So, here is another refresher: As you can see on the Bitcoin ETFs on-chain holdings chart here, the largest portion in purple is from Grayscale. Notice how, since the ETF launched, all other issuers have seen an increase in the amount of Bitcoins that they held.

However, the amount of Bitcoin held in Grayscale actually continued to go down. This is because Grayscale has had this other format that’s been trading in the US for a while called the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. This was a close-ended instrument that had very high fees and no redemptions, which means it wasn’t ideal.

So, a lot of people actually bought into this instrument before with the intention of withdrawing later on to take advantage of the arbitrage and converting the Grayscale ETF into other institutional ETFs once they came live. This is why, during the first couple of weeks, there was a pretty significant scare after the Bitcoin ETFs launched because people were saying, oh, the ETF actually wasn’t driving real demand because Grayscale was heavily selling.

Now, Grayscale also has an Ethereum Trust with a very similar format, and it currently holds $9 billion in assets under management. This is pretty significant. And with the Grayscale Ethereum Trust discount ratio, we also see that this discount has essentially disappeared at negative 0.5% only, which means a lot of people have bought up this before the ETF launch as well.

And a lot of them will likely convert this into other ETFs. So I wouldn’t be surprised to see a very similar scenario where the ETFs for Ethereum start trading, and we get some surprise FUD news again, where it says Grayscale is heavily dumping Ethereum, but in reality, we see shortly after that, BlackRock and Fidelity and other ETF issuers start to pick these up.

It’s also interesting to know that unlike GBDC or the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the Grayscale Ethereum Trust does not have forced sellers coming from bankruptcies like 3AC, Genesis, FTX, et cetera. So this could alleviate things a little bit.

Maybe we see this event getting priced in much sooner. So, the TLDR around Grayscale is that the Grayscale Ethereum Trust will also likely see significant outflows going into other funds because it’s a closed structure and has much higher fees. So, the conversion arbitrage will be taken advantage of.

So be careful right around the Ethereum ETF launch week. If you see FUD around this, just hold your bags because this is only a short-term event. There is one other caveat that could decrease the demand for these Ethereum ETFs, and that is around staking.

As we’ve just mentioned earlier, there are around 4.4% of annualized staking rewards that are foregone by anyone investing in an Ethereum ETF versus buying Ethereum directly and staking it.

This is because even though the US regulators have approved the Ethereum ETFs, these ETFs cannot have staking built into them. In fact, the SEC is currently undergoing a full lawsuit against ConsenSys and Metamask for offering staking services.

This battle needs to be resolved before staking is eventually added to these Ethereum ETFs. This could mean that any institution is specifically looking at Ethereum as a more productive asset if it is more attracted to the staking income of Ethereum, like a productive business.

ETF impact on Price

Lastly, how big of a price impact will these ETF inflows be for Ethereum? We can take a look at some of the available supply data for Bitcoin and Ethereum to see this. So, aside from the current market cap of Bitcoin versus Ethereum, which is about a 3X ratio, we also have some adjusted factors, namely around staking, lost supply, and supply locked-in bridges and smart contracts.

A big difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that Bitcoin does not have smart contracts or DeFi, which means there’s no staking, and there’s no amount of supply that’s locked up. The only supply that’s out there is all the supply that’s circulating, and they are mostly all circulating until they are lost or burnt.

So you see here, even though Bitcoin has around 16.6% of the supply that’s dormant or lost forever. In contrast, Ethereum only has 6.7% when looking at other areas like staking and supply in bridges and smart contracts; Ethereum actually has much more supply being locked up.

So you see, around 27% of Ethereum is already staked, which is unlikely to move; unlike Bitcoin, it’s around zero, and the amount that’s locked up in bridges for Bitcoin is only 1.6%, but on Ethereum, it’s 11.4%.

After applying some discounts, we come to the total adjusted circulating supply for Bitcoin and Ethereum, and you see here about 8.7% of all Bitcoin is locked away. In contrast, on Ethereum, there’s 14.4% of all Ethereum is locked away.

So, this part summarizes that there is a higher percentage of Ethereum being locked up versus Bitcoin, which means the price sensitivity should be greater for Ethereum than Bitcoin, which comes from these ETF inflows.

Ethereum Price Prediction

Now let me give you my prediction for the price of Ethereum shortly after the ETF starts trading. First, let’s look at the price of Bitcoin after the ETF launch. So the ETF launched on January 10th of this year, and right after that, Bitcoin actually saw a pretty significant drawdown here as a sell-the-news event, going from 46,000 all the way down to 38,000, a 15% drop.

I expect we could see something similar, especially if Grayscale starts dumping and the FUD comes out. But I do expect this to last a lot quicker because people already know how this is likely to play out over a longer term. So I don’t think there will be a two-week-long drawdown period, maybe something like one week and around a 10% drop.

Instead, we should look at how long it took Bitcoin to fully price in the upside potential in the next few months. So you see here, after the ETF launched, 65 days after that, Bitcoin reached an all-time high of $73,000 with a price increase of 58%.

And it has maintained around these levels from the 60-day mark all the way to the 150-day mark. So, between two and five months after the ETF launch. If we extrapolate these numbers on the price of Ethereum, here’s what we get. So, starting from the launch date around July 18th until the next peak around two months away, that is, in late September of this year.

If we get a 58% increase, the price of Ethereum will rise to $5,300. So this is my most bullish estimate. Ethereum could reach as high as $5,300 by September 20th of this year. Now, a more conservative target that’s more likely to come true is for Ethereum to actually reach these numbers in this range period between the two and five-month mark.

So, I think what’s much more likely to happen is for Ethereum to at least reach these levels between September and December of this year. These numbers also match the medium-term expectations that I made last month when we were looking at the Bitcoin price action after the Bitcoin ETF approval, the ratio of Ethereum versus Bitcoin, and how it’s been performing for the past year.

And if these numbers actually play out, then we can look at my long-term price prediction for Ethereum, which goes all the way back to last year, 10 months ago, when we looked at all the catalysts coming for Ethereum, such as positive Ethereum regulation, Ethereum layer twos, Ethereum account abstraction, Ethereum staking demand, as well as the Ethereum ETF.

I gave a price prediction until the end of this bull run based on the target for the total crypto market cap of around 10 trillion. So, in the end, I expected Ethereum to reach somewhere around 15 to $16,000 by the end of 2025. And we will be right in line with that as well. You should check this out for a longer-term outlook.

Okay, so if we see a renewed interest in Ethereum, what other ways can you get exposure to this? Are there any altcoins that you can potentially get positioned in right now in order to gain exposure?

Well, I think there are a lot of good choices here that are all heavily undervalued right now because while Ethereum just hasn’t been popular for the first half of this bull run, I think there are five different categories here that I want to mention.

Liquid Staking Providers

So, number one, we have the liquid staking projects on Ethereum. These are names that you all have heard before in the last couple of years, but they have quickly fallen out of fashion in the past couple of months. LIDO, Rocketpool, and Mantle are all some of the market leaders in Ethereum liquid staking, as well as Eigenlayer; once Eigenlayer actually comes to mainnet and launches their token, their ecosystem with restaking projects like Kelp, Renzo, and EtherFi, these are also going to be very popular as well.

Then, we have some of the core Ethereum infrastructure. A very interesting one here that I think is very different is the Ethereum Name Service. This is a product that specifically serves the Ethereum ecosystem. Ethereum is even in the name of this ENS project. So, I think this undoubtedly will be a very clear beta play to the price of Ethereum. Another one that I think is actually heavily underlooked right now is ZK-SYNC.

I know a lot of people will hit on this project and say, wow, what a disappointment, especially because of the disappointing launch. I think this has a lot of potential because I am still a big believer in ZK’s technology. Considering how big ZK-SYNC actually has an ecosystem, how many chains are actually building using the ZK technology, and the fact that they have raised over $400 million.

At the same time, the current market cap is trading fully diluted at 3.5 billion; I think this is quite undervalued here. Looking at this chart, it’s pretty much flat as well. So, undoubtedly, this will probably have a run-up in the second half of this bull run. Another very similar example that’s already starting to run is Layer 0. This is the core cross-chain infra for the entire Ethereum ecosystem. Again, very heavily hated launch because of the timing of it, because of Ethereum falling out of fashion.

But I think this one will honestly be at 3.9 billion and is also very heavily undervalued. A couple of other examples here in Ethereum Layer 2s that are not as heavily undervalued, such as Arbitrum Optimism. Obviously, people already know these two coins. I think they are still fairly valued at six to $8 billion.

So, I wouldn’t hold them too much, but I think these will also rally once Ethereum starts rallying. What’s much more interesting to me is the newly launched Layer 2s in the second half and Q3 and Q4 of this year. So, these are Linea, Skrull, and any other ones that may launch.

Ethereum DeFi

The fourth category is Ethereum DeFi coins. I know these are all legacy coins. People really have been hating on these because they just do not perform. However, if we see renewed interest in Ethereum, these are the most direct ways to get exposure to the Ethereum ecosystem.

So, it’s very simple: you just go on DeFi Llama and look at the Ethereum chain, which has the top DeFi protocols on the chain. We have a few that we have already mentioned, but the other ones that we haven’t are MakerDAO, Aave, Uniswap, ETHINA, and Pendel. These are all good choices. Lastly, if you are really into some of the more popular, you know, so-called community coins, you could just go for Ethereum-based meme coins.

So, meme coins on Ethereum, people already know PayPay, for example. So, one way I would like to do research on meme coins for Ethereum is to look at the Uniswap trading pool volume and liquidity. So you go on CoinGecko, you go on decentralized exchanges, and look at Uniswap v2 for the Ethereum chain specifically.

Here, you can rank the percentage volume per day by percentage depth. So these two metrics are really important because they directly show you the most popular coins that are trading on-chain on Ethereum only. It also shows you the most liquid coins that supply liquidity on Ethereum that you can only access on Ethereum.

So, by looking at these two metrics, we rank them, and we see some of the coins that are on here that we haven’t mentioned. PayPay, Flocky, MOG, and Beam are gaming coins if you’re into that. And then we have Bananagan and MAGA. And again, we sort by volume. We also have MOG, MAGA, and PayPay; that’s about it. You have APU, Wojack, et cetera, and a few other smaller ones. So I think it’s very clear that out of, let’s say, the top 10 on-chain coins on Ethereum, two of them really stand out to me: PayPay and MOG.

What’s Next for Ethereum and ETFs?

These two have the top 10 on-chain liquidity on Ethereum and the top 10 on-chain trading volume on Ethereum. So, it’s very simple: If you’re looking for Ethereum-based meme coins, PayPay and MOG are your best choices right now. Okay, before we wrap up, I want to note a couple of data points that I will be heavily monitoring for the next few months to see how the Ethereum ETF performs.

So specifically around the split between Bitcoin and Ethereum demand. So think about if you’re an institutional portfolio manager or a fund manager. Are you going to be deploying a similar amount of money into Bitcoin or Ethereum, or will you prefer to deploy money into Bitcoin versus Ethereum, or will you actually shift your portfolio, taking it out of Bitcoin and into Ethereum?

I think these are all possible scenarios based on the institution and what they’re looking for. So this one is very interesting. Will people be bidding at maximum for Bitcoin only, Ethereum only, or a mix of both? Number two, will staking ever be added to these Ethereum ETFs? And is not having the staking reward a big hindrance to institutional adoption in the next six to 12 months before they actually come live?

This is also very important. And number three, with the inflow of institutional money into Ethereum ETFs, can this demand actually drive up the Ethereum ecosystem and Ethereum-related altcoins, DeFi platforms, and maybe even NFTs? I think this is still a big question that’s up in the air right now. So this is why I’m not yet max bidding all of these altcoins we have mentioned, but if we see signs of interest rotation into the Ethereum ecosystem, then these are some of the targets that we are closely watching.

Overall, the Ethereum ETF will be a very positive thing for the entire crypto space because it will lift the majority of the prices, not only from a liquidity perspective like the demand for Bitcoin has brought but also because it will bring a greater acceptance for these smart contract based platforms and DeFi based platforms for the traditional investors.

Once Wall Street can fully embrace having Ether as a portion of their investment portfolio, then we can talk about much more in-depth types of investment into the long tail assets in crypto.

So, having that understanding of Bitcoin as a store of value versus going to Ethereum as a technology layer, a world computer or smart contract platform that can create all types of assets and decentralized finance, this is a big jump that I’m very happy to see the US traditional market actually coming into.