Spot Ethereum ETF Makes Statement as Day 1 Volume Tops $1B

In the early hours of Tuesday, the long-anticipated spot Ethereum ETF finally hit the U.S. market. Riding on the positive sentiment, the trading volume made a big splash right from the start.

Ethereum ETFs Surpasses Market Expectations

The approved eight Ethereum ETF products are now available for trading on three US stock exchanges. This comes after the investment issuers got the green light for their S-1 documents. Initially, the digital funds gained over $300 million in volume within the first hour of hitting the market. During the course of the day, funds from Grayscale, BlackRock, and Fidelity dominated the volume charts with over $1.112 billion inflows.

According to Bloomberg’s data, Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust (ETHE) led the pack with a volume of $469.7 million worth of shares traded. BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) follows closely behind with around $258.6 million. Fidelity’s Advantage Ethereum ETF recorded about $137.9 million in volume, and Bitwise’s Ethereum ETF bagged $94.3 million. 

UPDATE: First full day of flows for the ETHness stakes are in. The Ethereum ETFs took in $107 million. @BlackRock‘s $ETHA lead the way with $266.5 million followed by @BitwiseInvest‘s $ETHW with $204 million. Very solid first day pic.twitter.com/j28vIwVWvR

— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) July 24, 2024

Bloomberg’s analyst, Eric Balchunas said in a X post that the majority of the funds volume is mostly due to outflows. In the case of Grayscale Mini Trust, it was speculated that the $15 million inflow might be influenced by the low trading fees released recently. Meanwhile, Invesco Galaxy and 21Shares had lower volumes. Their funds recorded $17.1 million and $8.7 million respectively. This low volume comes despite 21 Shares’ effort to gain market advantage with its competitive trading fees.

Can Ethereum ETF Do More?

James Seyffart, another ETF Analyst at Bloomberg made a bullish prediction regarding the Ethereum ETF trajectory. He said if this volume trend continues, the ETFs are projected to hit around $1 billion on their first day of trading. This prediction notably came to pass. 

However, Markus Thielen, the founder of 10x Research thinks traders are not interested in the Ethereum ETFs compared to that of Bitcoins. A major deal breaker for the funds could be its less popularity compared to Bitcoin. Plus, Ethereum cannot be staked when buying shares in the fund and it has a lower funding rate. 

In contrast, Ethereum has gained quite some popularity in the market lately. Just last week, it recorded $45 million inflows, making the total net inflows for the year reach $103 million from institutional investors. Per CoinMarketCap data, the digital asset is trading at $3,489.08, up by 0.59% in the last 24 hours