Ethereum ETF fund inflow reverses, will BTC take over in the future?

Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

On December 29, Eugene Ng Ah Sio, a trader with great appeal in the cryptocurrency community, released his outlook and expectations for the first quarter of 2025 on X. The prediction indicates that ETH will become the best-performing mainstream token in the next quarter.

Eugene first mentioned three reasons for being bullish on ETH: technical trends; Trump's favor (especially WLF's massive purchase of the Ethereum ecosystem); and the development status of the Base ecosystem. Then he issued another article emphasizing that since Trump was elected, the capital inflow situation of Ethereum spot ETF has undergone a 180-degree change.

ETF fund trends: Is Ethereum more optimistic?

Eugene is not exaggerating. SoSoValue data shows that since Trump won the election on November 6, the capital inflow of the spot Ethereum ETF has increased significantly, and the growth trend during the same period has even exceeded that of the Bitcoin spot ETF.

Entering late December, this trend has become more obvious.

SoSoValue data shows that on last week’s trading day (December 23 to December 27, Eastern Time), the Ethereum spot ETF had a net inflow of US$349 million in a single week last week; while the Bitcoin spot ETF had a net outflow of US$388 million during the same period - This obvious difference in capital trends may indicate better expectations for ETH's market outlook.

As of the time of publication, the official ETF inflow/outflow data for Monday has not yet been fully announced, but according to Lookonchain’s on-chain monitoring, ten U.S. Bitcoin ETFs had a net outflow of 3,000 BTC ($275.59 million) yesterday; nine Ethereum ETFs had a net outflow of 3,000 BTC ($275.59 million); With an inflow of 16,359 ETH ($54.33 million), the trend seems to remain unchanged.

Trump Concept Family Bucket

In addition to ETF liquidity data, another reason supporting ETH expectations is the continued position building of the Trump family project WLFI.

In the past period of time, WLFI has successively purchased multiple Ethereum ecological tokens such as AAVE, LINK, ENA, and ONDO, but the project's current largest holdings are still ETH.

Although this is somewhat related to the fact that WIFI itself is deployed in the Ethereum ecosystem, the sentence "The president is already on the bus, what are you still hesitating about" still has a very FOMO effect.

Looking back at historical data, will the script repeat itself?

Coinglass data shows that in the first quarter of the new year after the historical US election and Bitcoin halving cycle, ETH performed best, especially in the first quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2021, when ETH rose by 518% and 161% respectively. %, even exceeding BTC’s returns in these two quarters (11.9%, 103.2%).

If history repeats itself, ETH may see a significant rise in Q1 next year.

Potential Beta Options

If ETH can really rise as expected, some Ethereum ecological tokens may become Beta options with higher risk/return, such as:

• Trump Concept Coin Portfolio: AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO;
• Grayscale Top 20 choices: LINK, UNI, AAVE, ENA, OP, LDO;
• Potential benefits expected from ETF staking: LDO, EIGEN, RPL, SSV;
• Ethereum ecological head AI concepts: VIRTUAL, GAME, AIXBT;

Odaily Note: The above tokens are only a list of specific sectors and concepts and do not constitute investment advice.

Opposition view

Although many well-known investors/traders, including Eugene, are openly bullish on ETH, there are also voices that are pessimistic about ETH's future performance.

Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, painted a more pessimistic scenario in this regard. He predicted that ETH would continue to underperform and would not be able to hit a new all-time high in the "hawkish" macro environment in 2025: "We expect the prospects for ETH in 2025 to be even better. To be conservative. Unlike previous years, initially hawkish policies may be tested by weakening liquidity tailwinds.”

During this period of violent market fluctuations, the predictions given by all parties are only "one-sided conclusions" based on the conditions and indicators they are concerned about. No one can predict the future. Please remember DYOR before taking action.