The price of Ethereum has surged 26% just this week, causing significant losses for short sellers.
Ethereum has reached 4,500 USD for the first time since 2021, causing the largest short liquidation in the cryptocurrency market. This second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization has recorded a 26% increase just in the past week, raising the total 30-day increase to over 50%, far exceeding Bitcoin's 6% performance in the same period.
Data from CoinGlass shows that more than 104 million USD in short ETH positions have been liquidated in the past 24 hours, accounting for a large part of the total 154 million USD in ETH positions wiped out. This figure leads the entire crypto market in terms of liquidation size, contributing to a total liquidation of 403 million USD across the entire cryptocurrency market.
This strong surge was primarily driven by record capital inflows into Ethereum ETFs. Last Monday, ETH recorded over 1 billion USD in net capital, far exceeding the previous record of 726 million USD. BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust contributed 63% of this capital inflow, almost single-handedly resetting the old record, while Bitcoin ETFs attracted only 170 million USD on the same day.
Large-scale Ethereum accumulation by businesses
In addition to ETFs, publicly listed companies are buying ETH at an unprecedented scale. SharpLink Gaming and BitMine Immersion Technologies currently hold an Ethereum stash worth nearly 8 billion USD, topping the global chart. BitMine recently increased its fundraising by another 20 billion USD to continue purchasing ETH for its balance sheet, while SharpLink raised nearly 900 million USD just in the past week.
In total, about 8% of the circulating ETH supply has been purchased as of Tuesday, a significant increase from 3% in April when no public companies had established a "strategic reserve" of Ethereum. This trend reflects a fundamental shift in how institutions are approaching ETH as a reserve asset.
At a price of 4,502 USD, ETH is still about 8% lower than its all-time high of 4,878 USD reached in November 2021. However, the Myriad forecasting platform assesses a 77.7% likelihood that ETH will surpass 5,000 USD before the end of 2025, up over 30% from last week.
The outperformance of ETH compared to Bitcoin recently, especially through ETF products, indicates a shift in institutional investment preferences. Since July, ETH has only had 3 days of net outflows, while ETH ETFs have consistently outperformed Bitcoin ETFs in terms of capital inflows over the past month. This signals a new phase in the adoption of Ethereum as a mainstream investment asset.
