Ethereum ETFs Did $1 Billion in Volume in First Day of Trading

Ethereum spot exchange traded funds (ETFs) did $1 billion of trading volume at launch, compared with Bitcoin spot ETFs’ opening day volume at $4.6 billion, which was at the high end of analyst predictions.

Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHE) did the most volume, followed by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), and Fidelity’s Ethereum Trust (FETH).

Ethereum ETF volumes are about 22% of what Bitcoin spot ETFs did on their first day, which was in line with optimistic predictions based on ETF volumes in other jurisdictions.

The ETH ETFs launch is the second-most successful out of any ETFs’ first day of trading after Bitcoin.

Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg said in an X post, “for some more context on these numbers: BlackRock launched a Manufacturing theme ETF $MADE last week. It did $300k in volume on Day One. $ETHA will have done 100x that amount in its first 30 minutes on (the) market.”

Crypto Asset Class

Ethereum ETFs help establish cryptocurrencies as an asset class which will continue gaining its place in institutional investors’ portfolios, says Matt Hougan in an interview with The Defiant.

“It’s historic. We’ve gone from one asset being available to traditional investors to multiple assets. One asset is an idea, multiple assets is an asset class,” Hougan said.

Hougan predicted ETFs will drive trillions in inflows as institutional investors go on to hold about half of crypto’s market cap, as is common in other asset classes.

There were eight new Ethereum-based funds that started trading today, plus Grayscale’s ETHE, which is an older instrument structured as a trust, rather than an ETF. As such, ETHE volumes of over $458 million are expected to be mostly outflows as ETFs have lower fees and a more efficient structure.

Price Impact

The effects of Ethereum ETFs will develop over the coming weeks and months, but the strong launch may be interpreted as promising for future adoption, and potentially the ETH price when compared to Bitcoin

Despite the Bitcoin ETFs incredible performance on day one, the BTC price proceeded to fall by over 20% in the weeks that followed, before continuing upwards to break new all-time highs.

Akin to BTC’s price action during its ETF launch, the ETH price is flat in the past 24 hours, sitting 2.2% lower than the high it touched leading up to the ETF launch.

Longer term, Hougan said investors will continue buying ETH ETFs primarily to help diversify their crypto holdings, but also as they buy into the narrative that Ethereum is a platform for decentralized applications, different from Bitcoin’s value proposition as digital gold.