"When everyone is fearful, that's when the time to be greedy is ticking away." This morning, Powell made a statement during the quiet period before the Jackson Hole annual meeting, coupled with the gloomy opening of the three major U.S. stock indices, unexpectedly allowing ETH to emerge with an independent trend—while BTC barely held the $65,000 mark in fluctuation, ETH strongly broke through the $3400 resistance level, with a daily increase of 3.7%, as if to declare: smart money has begun to position for crypto alpha opportunities before the September rate cut.
Looking at today's on-chain data, a more interesting narrative emerges. According to real-time monitoring by Token Terminal, the gas consumption in the ETH ecosystem has suddenly surged by 42%, with multiple large ETH/USDC exchanges exceeding $5 million occurring on Uniswap, clearly indicating that institutional players are accumulating at the bottom. Even more interestingly, Deribit ETH options' open contracts are concentrated in the $3500-$3600 call range, creating a noticeable expectation gap with the current price—professional traders are betting real money on a more than 15% price increase within two weeks.
I personally believe that the current strength of ETH is by no means accidental. From a macro perspective, the U.S. July retail sales month-on-month unexpectedly recorded -0.2% last night, strengthening expectations for a 25 basis point rate cut by the Federal Reserve on September 18 (current CME interest rate futures show a probability of 78%). Historical data indicates that the beta coefficient of ETH relative to the S&P 500 index will soar from 0.8 to 1.3 in the 30 days leading up to the first rate cut, which means institutions are allocating ETH as a substitute for tech stocks. A typical case is the week of June 13, when BlackRock's IBIT saw a sudden increase of 42,000 ETH in its holdings, coinciding with a period of continuous decline in the U.S. stock market.
The technical analysis reveals key signals. The ETH 4-hour chart has formed a classic 'cup and handle' pattern at the $3350 position, with a volume cooperation rate exceeding 80%, which is usually a sign of a mid-term breakout. Notably, the ETH locked in the Staking contract has suddenly increased by 960,000 coins (approximately $3.26 billion), indicating that large holders are not worried about short-term fluctuations but are preparing for a yield enhancement strategy under the POS mechanism—considering that the current annualized yield of 4.2% far exceeds the 3.8% of U.S. Treasury bonds.
However, it is necessary to be cautious as the density of risk events in September can be described as a 'crypto storm season': the SEC's final decision on ETF options trading, congressional hearings on Defi regulatory bills, and the upcoming cryptocurrency policy white paper from the Trump team, all of which could become short-term black swans. Conversely, any positive news could serve as a catalyst to ignite the market, just like this morning's sudden launch of ENS perpetual contracts by Coinbase, which brought an instantaneous 20% increase.
The window period for ordinary investors is narrowing—when Wall Street starts using ETH options to hedge tech stock positions, are you ready to seize the first alpha opportunity in the rate cut cycle?
