“Institutional FOMO,” Record Volume Seen by Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) & Ether ETFs

Eth is showing no signs of stopping anytime soon. While Bitcoin made its way back down to $54,700, trading above $56k as of writing this, Ether is taking BTC’s ranging opportunity to run higher and higher. A new all-time high was made by ETH yesterday at $3,454 on Coinbase. After a subsequent drop to $3,165, Ether is now back around $3,400. A new three-year high was made by Ether against BTC as well at just above 0.060 BTC, last seen in July 2018. Ether’s price action has the volume on the second-largest cryptocurrency surging to $71.4 billion, higher than Bitcoin’s $61.3 billion in the last 24 hours, as per CoinGecko. The volume is also high on Ether investment vehicles. On Monday, Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) had a record volume at $430 million. “If it were an ETF, it would rank in the top 2% most traded. Mkt cap on this thing up to $10b vs. $32b for GBTC,” noted Eric Balchunas, a senior ETF analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Record volume has been registered for the Canadian Ether ETFs as well, which traded $32m ($860 million USD) collectively. As we reported, Ether is currently catching up to Bitcoin’s rally that saw it hit a new ATH at $65k, 225% above the 2017 high of $20k, while Ether has only rallied 143% from its Jan. 2018 high of $1,420. Currently, the flipping of Bitcoin by Ethereum, which is gaining popularity with the latter’s turbo run, has happened 37% for now. “ETH trading similarly to Q2 2020 Bitcoin, latent cash bid, perpetuals constantly backwardated,” said Avi Sanyal, head of trading at BlockTower. “Smells to me that we very much so have institutional FOMO into the ETH / DeFi ecosystem, and they are starting with the most "insto" DeFi assets.” And that’s why it’s not a coincidence that the DeFi blue-chips like UNI, COMP, and MKR have been showing outsized strength alongside the ongoing idiosyncratic spot bid where the price of ETH is running higher than in the futures market. The highest funding rate on Ether futures is currently at 0.0874% on BitMEX, as per Viewbase. According to Sanyal, the wealth effect will kick in at some point, and “ETH will have to go further than ever to create it” because many crypto-natives are already overweight their favorite crypto assets. The billionaire owner of Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, is also very bullish on Ether as “Crypto is trustless and a better way to handle many transactions,” and this is why crypto assets have value. “Crypto succeeds when it's a more productive implementation of it's competition,” said Cuban, noting, “Eth Smart Contracts are better, cheaper, faster at authenticating/buying/selling/delivering digital items than alternatives available.” “Crypto not just about being more productive and effective, but also no longer dependent on ‘trusted institutions,’” he added. [top_coins]