Spot Ethereum ETFs post $113M of outflows on second day of launch

Reported by Cointelegraph: The “newborn” eight ETFs didn’t manage to outrun the $327 million of outflows from Grayscale’s recently converted Ethereum Trust.

United States-based spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have returned net outflows of $113.3 million on their second trading day, primarily due to heavy bleeding from Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust.

Seven of the eight “newborn” spot Ether ETFs posted net inflows on day two of trading. The Fidelity Ethereum Fund (FETH) and the Bitwise Ethereum ETF (BITW) led the pack with the largest net inflows, posting $74.5 million and $29.6 million, respectively.

BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA), which posted the most robust inflows out of the group on July 23, only collected $17.4 million from investors on July 24.

The new ETFs were weighed down by another heavy day of selling from the recently converted Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE), which hemorrhaged $326.9 million in outflows.

Launched by Grayscale in 2017, ETHE allowed institutional investors to purchase ETH. However, it imposed a six-month lock-up period on all investments. Upon its conversion to a spot Ether fund on July 22, investors have been able to sell their ETH more easily.

In the two days following its conversion, ETHE has witnessed $811 million in outflows, meaning that existing ETHE investors have now sold off just over 9% of the fund’s holdings.

The recent Ether ETF performance isn’t unprecedented.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs posted cumulative net outflows for six out of 10 of their first trading days, with many blaming outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF.

ETH is trading at $3,172 at the time of publication, down over 6.8% in the last 24 hours and 7.4% on the week, per TradingView data.

Ether’s souring price action came amid a wider sell-off in the equities market, with the S&P 500 closing down 2.3% on July 24.

Notably, ETH fell more sharply relative to Bitcoin, which only tumbled 2.6%. This is in line with Kaiko analyst Will Cai’s prediction that ETH’s price could be extremely “sensitive” to inflows following the launch of the ETFs.

Grayscale’s ETHE shed $484.4 million on its first day of trading as a spot Ether ETF. However, robust inflows across the other eight products pushed cumulative net inflows to $106.6 million.