Deng Tong, Golden Finance
On July 30, 2025, Ethereum will celebrate its 10th anniversary. What major events have taken place in the history of Ethereum's development over the past decade? Who is buying Ethereum as the market is rising? What new narratives does Ethereum have? Can it reach the $4,000 mark?
1. Review of major events in Ethereum’s ten-year journey
In 2013, Vitalik Buterin conceived Ethereum. In 2014, he started the development of Ethereum with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio and Joseph Lubin, and conducted crowdfunding. Ethereum was officially launched on July 30, 2015. Now, Ethereum is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary. In this section, let us review the major events in the history of Ethereum development and look back at the highlights of Ethereum's development.
In 2013, Vitalik Buterin published the Ethereum white paper. In the white paper, Vitalik acknowledged that the birth of Bitcoin in 2009 was a major breakthrough for Satoshi Nakamoto. However, what Vitalik really wanted to expand was the underlying blockchain technology as a tool for distributed consensus.
From July 22 to September 2, 2014, Ethereum was available for sale and people could buy Ethereum using Bitcoin. In the Ethereum announcement, the discount for Ethereum was set at 2,000 ETH per BTC and fell linearly to 1,337 ETH per BTC in 42 days. This means that the launch price of ETH was $0.29 per ETH. But when ETH was first traded on August 7, 2015, it was trading at $2.77.
On July 30, 2015, the first version of Ethereum, Frontier, was officially launched, marking the official launch of the Ethereum mainnet. The Ethereum network officially moved from theory to practice. Developers could mine Ethereum and start developing dApps and various tools, taking the first critical step in the development of the Ethereum ecosystem.
On March 14, 2016, the Homestead hard fork was officially launched. This fork marked the transition of Ethereum from the experimental stage to a more stable official version, laying an important foundation for subsequent development.
On July 20, 2016, Ethereum suffered its first major hack, the DAO attack, which led to the DAO fork. The DAO attack originated from an unsafe contract, which led to the hacker stealing 3.6 million ETH. The DAO fork was conducted by the Ethereum community through a voting system, and any ETH holder could vote through the voting platform. In the end, 85% of voters agreed to the fork. However, some miners refused to fork, which led to the birth of Ethereum Classic (ETC).
On October 18, 2016, the Tangerine Whistle hard fork was launched to address urgent network health issues facing the Ethereum network.
On October 16, 2017, the Byzantium hard fork was officially launched. It was the first hard fork in the development phase of Ethereum’s “Metropolis” and included 9 Ethereum Improvement Protocols (EIPs) to improve Ethereum’s operating efficiency, privacy, and security. It also reduced the block reward from 5ETH to 3ETH and postponed the “difficulty bomb”.
On February 28, 2019, Constantinople Hard Fork was launched. Constantinople Hard Fork aims to improve the operating efficiency of Ethereum and design more optimized solutions for smart contracts and decentralized applications.
On December 9, 2019, Istanbul hard fork was launched. This upgrade improved the denial of service (DoS) attack that Ethereum suffered a few years ago. This hard fork also enabled interoperability between Ethereum and Zcash and allowed contracts to have more innovative features.
On January 2, 2020, the “Muir Glacier” hard fork postponed the “difficulty bomb” by 4 million new blocks, or about 611 days, buying more time for Ethereum to transition to a proof-of-stake mechanism.
On December 1, 2020, the beacon chain began producing blocks. The beacon chain is a core component of Ethereum 2.0 and is a brand new proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.
On April 15, 2021, the Berlin upgrade was launched. This hard fork optimized the gas fees for certain operations on the EVM and added support for multiple transaction types.
On August 5, 2021, the London hard fork introduced EIP 1559, which implemented a base fee system, a tipping mechanism, and a feature that allows users to specify a maximum fee. If there is a difference between the maximum fee, the base fee, and the miner tip, the user will receive a refund in ETH.
The Altair fork on October 27, 2021 was the first upgrade to the beacon chain. The two main upgrades of the Altair fork include the introduction of the "inactivity + slashing" mechanism and support for light clients. "Inactivity + slashing penalties" reduces the rewards for inactive stakers on the network, while support for light clients allows validators to access the blockchain without being constantly connected to the blockchain.
On December 9, 2021, Arrow Glacier was launched, aiming to delay the Ethereum network’s “difficulty bomb” until June 2022.
On June 30, 2022, the “Grey Glacier” upgrade delayed the difficulty bomb by 3 months.
On September 15, 2022, the Ethereum merge upgrade was completed, marking an important event in the Ethereum blockchain's transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. This upgrade merged the Ethereum mainnet with the beacon chain, which is a milestone in the history of blockchain development.
In June 2022, Gray Glacier was upgraded. This upgrade delayed the difficulty bomb again, buying more time for Ethereum's full transition to the proof-of-stake mechanism, ensuring that the network mining difficulty will not increase excessively due to the difficulty bomb, and maintaining the stable operation of the network.
In March 2024, Dencun was upgraded. This upgrade introduced data blobs for the second-layer expansion, which helped improve the performance of Ethereum's second-layer solution, improved the scalability of the network, and laid the foundation for reducing transaction costs and increasing transaction processing speed.
On May 24, 2024, the SEC officially approved the 19b-4 form for the Ethereum spot ETF, involving BlackRock, Invesco, Fidelity and other institutions. The 19b-4 form is mainly used for rule change applications proposed by stock exchanges, which is a key step in the listing of the Ethereum spot ETF. On July 23, 2024, the SEC officially approved the ETF's S-1 document, and the Ethereum spot ETF was approved for listing. The S-1 document is the last step before the fund officially starts to be sold and traded. This approval marks that the Ethereum spot ETF can officially enter the market for trading.
On May 7, 2025, the Pectra upgrade was activated. It introduced 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at enhancing the staking, scalability, and user experience of the Ethereum network.
2. Who is buying ETH recently?
1. Giant Whale
On July 21, James Wynn closed his long positions in ETH (25x leverage) and PEPE (10x leverage), making a profit of $538,500.
On July 20, a whale withdrew 103 WBTC (US$12.22 million) from Binance and exchanged 70 of them for 2,214 ETH (US$8.26 million) on the chain at an exchange rate of 0.0316.
On July 20, The White Whale, a top trader on the Hyperliquid platform, made nearly $30 million in profits in just one week. In the past week, he has locked in nearly $30 million in profits by going long on ETH and SOL through 4 wallets, ranking first on the list.
On July 20, the hacker who stole more than $300 million from Coinbase users purchased another 649.62 ETH ($2.31 million) at $3,561 nine hours earlier.
On July 20, two newly created “whales,” or institutional wallets, purchased 58,268 ETH, worth approximately $212 million, through FalconX and Galaxy Digital.
On July 19, the "whale/institution hoarding ETH through FalconX" continued to hoard 19,550 ETH (about $70.7 million). Since July 12, this address has continued to hoard 122,000 ETH (about $435 million) through FalconX, with an average price of about $3,213.
2. Institutions
On July 18, Nasdaq-listed company Bit Digital (stock code: BTBT) announced that it had purchased approximately 19,683 ETH using the net proceeds from a recently completed $67.3 million private placement. After this transaction, the total amount of Ethereum held by Bit Digital reached approximately 120,306.
On July 18, the Trump family's crypto project WLFI spent 3 million USDC to increase its holdings of 861 ETH.
On July 18, Nasdaq-listed Thumzup Media Corporation announced that its board of directors has approved authorization for the company to invest $250 million in cryptocurrencies. The cryptocurrencies it plans to invest in at this stage include: BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, LTC and USDC, aiming to diversify its cryptocurrency investment portfolio.
On July 18, SharpLink increased its holdings by another 18,712 ETH, bringing its total holdings to 326,074 ETH, worth $1.14 billion.
On July 17, BlackRock purchased another 158,875 ETH, worth about $574 million. This is the total 363,445 ETH the institution has purchased in two days, with a total value of $1.31 billion. Currently, the total amount of ETH held by BlackRock has reached 2.46 million, worth about $8.9 billion.
On July 17, GameSquare Holdings announced that it plans to issue 46,666,667 shares of common stock to raise US$70 million. The company plans to use the funds to increase its ETH holdings.
3. What are the new narratives of ETH?
1. Treasury Enterprise
More and more companies are hoarding cryptocurrencies, following Strategy's lead and transforming into crypto treasury companies.
On May 27, 2025, sports betting operator SharpLink Gaming, Inc. (NASDAQ: SBET) announced the signing of a securities purchase agreement for a $425 million private placement (PIPE) of a public company, planning to issue approximately 69.1 million shares of common stock (or equivalent securities) at a price of $6.15 per share (US$6.72 per share for members of the company's management team). SharpLink will use the raised funds to purchase Ethereum (ETH) as the company's main treasury reserve asset. After the transaction is completed, Ethereum co-founder, Consensys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin will serve as chairman of the board of directors of SharpLink and assist the company in developing its core business as a strategic advisor. Since then, SharpLink has officially become an Ethereum treasury enterprise, known as the "ETH version of MicroStrategy".
For details, please refer to the Golden Finance article: (From Gambling Operator to "ETH Version of MicroStrategy" Understanding SharpLink's Journey to Ethereum Treasury)
2. Ethereum ETF
Since the US SEC officially approved the Ethereum spot ETF in July 2024, products represented by BlackRock (ETHA), Fidelity (FETH), and Grayscale (ETHE) have quickly become the darlings of funds. BlackRock ETHA ranks first with $21 billion in AUM, and the average daily net inflow of a single product exceeds $120 million. This scale growth not only reflects the recognition of ETH by traditional institutions, but also makes ETH gradually shift from a "high-risk crypto asset" to a "mainstream configuration target."
The popularity of Ethereum ETFs has significantly changed the holding structure of ETH - the proportion of institutional holdings has increased from 12% in 2024 to 27% in 2025, while the proportion of exchange circulation has dropped from 31% to 18%, the lowest since 2018. This "de-exchange" trend has reduced short-term selling pressure, reducing ETH price volatility (30-day annualized) from 65% to 42%, closer to traditional assets (such as gold volatility of about 15%), further attracting risk-averse funds to enter the market. ETH is being integrated into the traditional financial system.
3. Sovereign Wealth Funds
On June 4, Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin revealed that the company is negotiating with a sovereign wealth fund and bank of a "big country" about the possibility of building infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem. Lubin predicts that Ethereum will usher in a decentralized super cycle and may become the core of the new global financial system.
Vitalik Buterin said that the Ethereum blockchain capacity will increase 10 times in the next year. Lubin called Ethereum the "gold standard of trust" and believed that its value could eventually surpass Bitcoin.
4. Reserve assets of the new digital dollar economy
The development of USD stablecoins creates unprecedented opportunities for Ethereum. Stablecoins provide individuals around the world with access to USD - which has grown 60x to over $200 billion since 2020 - and millions of new USD holders need more than just digital cash. They need yield, investment opportunities, and financial services. Traditional finance cannot serve this massive new market due to regulatory and infrastructure limitations.
4. Will ETH reach the $4,000 mark? Is the altcoin season coming?
Ethereum’s strong price action has been one of the bright spots in the cryptocurrency market in July. Kobeissi noted: “Since July 1, Ethereum’s market cap has increased by $150 billion, and net short exposure hit an all-time high a few days ago.”
ETH/USD 3-hour chart. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X
“In addition, many shorts are using leverage, which adds further pressure. Ethereum could hit $4,000 soon.” If Ethereum rises another 10%, an additional $1 billion in short positions will be liquidated.
Heatmap of ETH exchange liquidations as of July 18. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X
On July 20, LD Capital founder Yi Lihua wrote: "ETH has broken 3,700. The weakness in the past few years has made everyone forget the bull markets of 2017 and 2020, when ETH far outperformed BTC. This time, we insist that ETH will continue to outperform BTC, which has been verified. Don't short in the bull market, at least hold ETH, and you won't miss this round of market."
QCP Capital stated in its weekly market report released on July 21: Multiple altcoin seasonal indicators have exceeded 50, reaching the highest level since December last year, and the open interest of ETH perpetual contracts has jumped from US$18 billion to US$28 billion in a week, indicating that the altcoin season may have officially begun. QCP pointed out that the leaders of this cycle are institutional investors. Benefiting from the clarification of the stablecoin regulatory framework brought about by the implementation of the GENIUS Act, corporate finances have begun to increase their holdings of L1 public chain tokens such as ETH, SOL, XRP and ADA, similar to the role of BTC in the financial configuration of Strategy and Metaplanet.
If ETH gets SEC approval for its collateralized spot ETF in the next few months, it may attract funds from BTC ETF to ETH, further releasing the potential for returns. In fact, last week, the daily net inflow of ETH spot ETF exceeded BTC for two consecutive days, showing that institutions have a surge in interest in ETH, and BlackRock is also confident in its collateralized ETH ETF.
In addition, the ETH options market has active bullish spread trading, with a large number of bullish spread positions expiring in September and December, highlighting the market's optimism about the fourth quarter. Currently, BTC's market dominance has fallen from 64% to 60%, while ETH's market share has risen from 9.7% to 11.6%. If the trend continues, a new round of altcoin season may have begun. QCP said it will continue to pay attention to relevant signals and update trends as soon as possible.
