Ethereum outruns bitcoin as ETF money returns, almost all of it from BlackRock’s fund

Bitcoin’s funds are still lurching, however. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs shed $424 million on July 13, then took back $181 million the next day. Money leaving and returning inside 48 hours is not indicative of an allocator building a position.

As such, the ether bid is narrower. Of the $53.8 million that came in on Wednesday, BlackRock’s ETHA absorbed $45.3 million and its smaller ETHB fund took $4 million, leaving the other eight products to split less than $5 million between them.

Grayscale’s original ether trust, which charges 2.5% against BlackRock’s 0.25%, has now bled $5.3 billion since launch.

Ether also picked up a demand source that did not exist three weeks ago. Robinhood Chain, the layer-2 network the brokerage switched on July 1, pays gas in ether and settles to Ethereum, and it has been clearing more than $800 million in daily decentralized exchange volume, most of it memecoin trading.

Bitcoin is steadier than its ETF flows suggest, however. Nansen data shows exchange outflows holding through the escalation in the Middle East, with no meaningful rotation into stablecoins, the move that usually marks wallets stepping back.

Funding rates are near zero, which is suggestive of the overleveraged longs that fuelled June’s liquidation cascades have already been cleared out. Bitcoin dominance is 58.3%.