Ethereum exchange-traded funds will finally hit U.S. markets tomorrow after the Securities and Exchange Commission said yes to the products in May and signed them off for trading today.
The Bitcoin equivalent has been a roaring success following its launch in January. The funds—which allow investors to buy shares that track the price of the cryptocurrency—received lots of attention as traditional investors previously spooked by the complex crypto space could finally get exposure to an asset on a traditional stock exchange.
So will traders repeat the rush and flood the new Ethereum funds with cold, hard cash? Can we look forward to an all-time high price for ETH, as some have predicted?
Hold your horses, market experts told Decrypt. Things might take a while to settle out.
“I think the inflows are going to disappoint for the ETH ETFs,” Greg Magadini, derivatives director at blockchain data provider Amberdata, told Decrypt. He pointed to demand for Ethereum futures being “lackluster” ahead of the launch.
Before the Bitcoin ETFs dropped, Magadini said, traders were desperate for exposure to the asset, and the derivatives market—which allowed people to bet on the future price of an asset—was buzzing.
This is simply not the case this time round. “Therefore the demand for ETH exposure is likely to be underwhelming compared to BTC,” he added.
James Butterfill, head of research at Jersey-based asset manager CoinShares, pointed to another potential downside: Grayscale.
The top crypto asset manager will launch two products: a main ETF and a mini one. The main one will be a conversion from a fund that operates like a closed-end product to an ETF. ETFs, by their very nature, are easy to cash out of.
It’s expected, Butterfill told Decrypt, that investors will want to cash out of the main Grayscale ETF as soon as it launches—which is exactly what happened when Grayscale converted its Bitcoin trust into an ETF in January, putting downward pressure on the asset’s price.
“It is highly likely the initial weeks will be marred by outflows from the Grayscale ETH product, in a similar way to the Bitcoin closed-end fund that saw outflows when it became an ETF—investors had been ‘locked in’ due to the steep discount to net asset value,” he said.
He did add that the approval was positive for the digital asset sector as a whole, and eventually “may enhance market stability and investor confidence.”
As for the mini fund, Billy Luedtke, CEO and founder of Ethereum-based authentication protocol Intuition, said that the mini trust could help push the price of ETH up.
“The [mini trust] offers investors an exchange to the new ETFs without tax liabilities, providing a more attractive fee structure to those who might be skeptical,” he told Decrypt. “With reduced barriers to entry, enhanced investor attractiveness through improved fee structures and tax benefits, and increased awareness, substantial inflows into Ethereum can likely be expected.”
Finally, Patrick Felder, Prismatic Capital founder and CIO, told Decrypt that the market is expecting flows of around 15-25% of what we're seeing with the Bitcoin ETF.
He added that if inflows come in stronger than that, “we’ll see a big move up in ETH price as market expectations reset.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.