Ether Lags Behind Bitcoin as New ETFs Fail to Kindle Demand

(Bloomberg) -- Ether continues to lag behind leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin as recently-debuted exchange-traded funds fail to kindle greater demand for the second-ranked token.

Despite the recent launch of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, the token continues to lag behind Bitcoin in terms of demand.

Data compiled by Bloomberg shows that spot-Ether ETFs, which launched in July, have experienced eight consecutive days of net outflows, amounting to nearly $112 million in total. This marks the longest losing streak for the ETFs so far.

Ether has not yet recovered from the losses incurred during a sharp selloff earlier in August. The selloff was triggered by the unwinding of a yen carry trade, which dealt a blow to crypto markets and global equities alike. While Bitcoin has risen about 8% since then, spot-ETFs for the largest token have seen inflows.

“Ether is now searching for a new narrative to fuel its continued growth,” said Muneeb Khan, executive director of Kraken OTC, in an email. He noted that earlier enthusiasm for Ether’s deflationary potential appeared to have waned.

Unlike Bitcoin, which has a fixed cap of 21 million coins, Ether's supply can change. And the total number of Ether tokens in circulation has increased for most of this year.

Platforms like Arbitrum and Optimism, which help scale Ethereum and are also known as Layer-2 chains, are starting to eat into transaction fees on the network, according to Cici Lu McCalman, founder of Venn Link Partners.

At the same time, Ethereum relies on burning part of the transaction fees it earns to permanently remove tokens from circulation. So losing fees to Layer-2 platforms is making Ether become “inflationary rather than deflationary,” Lu said.

The move of economic activity from Ethereum to a growing number of Layer-2s has led to “some hand-wringing and broader concerns over what Ethereum should focus on developing and what the future of ETH, the asset, looks like,” research firm Messari said in a Monday note.

A shift in industry focus from decentralized finance projects to memecoins is also partly to blame for Ether’s under-performance relative to Solana, a rival token, Lu added. The Solana blockchain is popular for memecoin issuers.

On Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell gave the clearest indication yet that the central bank is preparing to cut benchmark rates from a more than two-decade high. This move would create a more favorable liquidity backdrop for global markets. While this sparked a price uptick in Bitcoin, which was also coupled with strong ETF inflows, the same has not occurred for Ether.

Bitcoin was trading at $62,889 with Ether at $2,686 as of 10:15 a.m. London time.