It’s been a little over two-months since spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) began trading, and while there’s been a fair amount of interest in these funds, it’s nowhere near the hype spot Bitcoin ETFs received.
The funds recorded over $1 billion in trading volume on the first day of trade, which represented 23% of what spot Bitcoin ETFs did on day one. It’s a similar picture today, although spot ETH ETFs clocked $58.7 million worth of inflows last week, ending six consecutive weeks of outflows.
The resurgence in inflows was led by the Fidelity Ethereum Fund (FETH) which recorded $42.5 million inflows on Friday, and BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) which drew $11.5 million on the day and surpassed $1 billion in total assets.
In comparison, BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF IBIT took just a week to hit the $1 billion AUM mark, and was the fastest ever ETF to cross $10 billion in AUM.
According to BlackRock’s head of digital assets Robert Mitchnick, the so-called “underwhelming” response to Ethereum ETFs compared to their Bitcoin counterparts has more to do with the narrative around the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
“With ETH, I think the investment story and narrative is a bit less easy for a lot of investors to digest, so that’s a big part of why we’re so committed to the education journey that we’re on with a lot of our clients,” he said at the Messari Mainnet conference, first reported by Fortune.
Mitchnick highlighted the fact that it usually takes new ETFs a few years to get to the billion-dollar AUM milestone, but ETHA managed to do so in a few months.
“And so, you don’t expect them [Ethereum ETFs] to ever be quite as large in terms of flows and AUM as their Bitcoin counterparts are. But it’s still a pretty good start.”
