Although we still have a long way to go in 2024, this year has already been quite eventful for the cryptocurrency industry and not only for Bitcoin.
The second-largest digital asset also received a massive dose of validation earlier this year when the US Securities and Exchange Commission greenlighted almost ten exchange-traded funds tracking its performance. The first several days of trading, though, have been quite underwhelming.
The ETH ETFs were initially greenlighted a few months back, but due to some regulatory paperwork that had to be aligned, they were finally launched on US stock exchanges on July 23.
The first trading day saw substantial volumes and $106.6 million in total inflows, even though $484.1 million left Grayscale’s converted fund (ETHE). This is because BlackRock’s ETHA (with $266.5 million) and Bitwise’s ETHW (with $204 million), among others, managed to make up Grayscale’s losses.
However, these positive flows were short-lived, and the tides turned in the following three days. Data from FarSide shows that while Grayscale’s ETHE continued to see substantial outflows ($326.9 million on July 24, $346.2 million on July 25, and $356.3 million on July 26), the remaining ETFs’ flows can’t catch up.
Overall, the total outflows for these days were $133.3 million, $152.4 million, and $162.7 million, respectively. What’s particularly concerning is that the withdrawn funds are actually increasing.
Bloomberg’s ETF specialist, Eric Balchunas, acknowledged the tough first days for all spot Ethereum ETFs but saw some positives in the performance of the so-called “new eight” products – all recently launched ETFs aside from Grayscale’s converted one.
The ‘New Eight’ Ether ETFs not quite as strong as the ‘New Nine’ bitcoin ETFs in offsetting Grayscale outflows but good news is their inflows/volume is still very healthy, and the intensity of the $ETHE unlock will die down sooner than it did w $GBTC = outlook good but next few… https://t.co/DnOsKsouzP
— Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) July 26, 2024
The silver lining for ETH is that it managed to recover most of the losses induced earlier this week when it slumped from $3,500 to $3,000 in hours amid the ETF outflows. As of now, ether trades close to $3,300.