Ether nears 2021 record high as money pours into ETFs, bullish forecasts abound
Ether could test its all-time high this week for the first time since the cryptocurrency saw the level in 2021, if investors keep up this week's buying momentum. The price of ether, better known by its ticker ETH, was last higher by more than 4% at $4,705.32, according to Coin Metrics. Earlier, it traded as high as $4,714.02, putting it less than $200 away from its November 2021 all-time high. ETH treasury stocks gained too. Bitmine Immersion jumped 9%, while SharpLink Gaming added more than 7% and Bit Digital advanced 4%. Inflows into ether ETFs are up to $1.5 billion so far this week, compared to $244 million into bitcoin ETFs. They're heading for their fourth consecutive week outpacing flows into bitcoin ETFs. Ether ETFs showed almost no signs of life for most of their first year of trading, until this summer. ETH.CM= 1Y mountain Ether (ETH) has held above the key $4,000 level this week That shift was catalyzed by regulatory tailwinds that prompted a boom in institutional interest around stablecoins, which account for 40% of all blockchain fees and more than half of which are powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Ether is "the biggest macro trade over the next 10-15 years and a lot of it has to do with the fact that stablecoins have become the Chat GPT moment for crypto," Fudstrat's Tom Lee, who also recently became chairman of Bitmine , told CNBC's "Worldwide Exchange" Wednesday morning. "And now we have the GENIUS Act and Project Crypto from the SEC , which is essentially Wall Street running onto the blockchain." In the last two and a half months, ETH treasury companies and ETFs have purchased 3.8% of all ETH in circulation, Geoff Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, pointed out in a note Wednesday. Kendrick hiked his price target on ETH to $7,500 by the end of the year from $4,000 — and to $25,000 by the end of 2028, from $7,500. "The July passage of the U.S. GENIUS Act, which clears the way for mainstream adoption of stablecoins, is a pivotal change" and "should also indirectly boost activity on Ethereum's layer 1 as increased stablecoin liquidity leads to more decentralized finance activity, where ETH dominates," Kendrick said. ETH gains also come after stablecoin issuer Circle's first earnings report , which showed a 53% jump in quarterly revenue on strong stablecoin growth, and ahead of the public trading debut of the crypto exchange Bullish, which has a focus on decentralized finance. Ether has held above $4,000 since last Friday, when it breached the level for the first time since December. Although ether has revisited this resistance mark a handful of times since 2021, it has been a challenging one psychologically and technically for traders and has not sustained it before now. The recent climb triggered a wave of short liquidations — more than $250 million across exchanges in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGlass. When traders use leverage to short ETH and the coin's price rises, they buy ETH back from the market to close their positions, pushing the price up and causing more positions to be liquidated. Elsewhere in crypto, bitcoin was trading flat at about $120,600, while altcoins saw bigger gains. The CoinDesk 20 index , a measure of the broader crypto market, was up 2%.
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