Ethereum
VanEck to close its Ethereum futures ETF in September, a year after launch
- VanEck is closing its Ethereum Futures ETF (EFUT) by September 16, 2024.
- The EFUT saw low asset accumulation as compared to VanEck’s spot Ethereum ETF.
- Generally, Ethereum is facing challenges from competition and reduced network revenue and fees.
VanEck is set to close its Ethereum Strategy ETF (EFUT) by September 16, 2024, with liquidation expected by September 23.
EFUT, launched in October 2023, has struggled with low asset accumulation and performance compared to VanEck’s more successful spot Ethereum ETF (ETHV).
Strategic realignment
VanEck’s move to close the EFUT ETF comes as part of a strategic review of its ETF offerings. Launched in October 2023, EFUT was designed to provide exposure to Ethereum futures, but it amassed only $21 million in assets, contrasting sharply with the $63 million net inflows seen by the spot Ethereum ETF (ETHV).
The decision to liquidate EFUT aligns with VanEck’s ongoing assessment of factors such as performance, liquidity, and investor interest.
Shareholders of EFUT will receive cash distributions based on the net asset value of their holdings following the ETF’s closure and liquidation.
This shift reflects VanEck’s broader strategy of focusing on more successful crypto-related products.
Challenges facing Ethereum and Ether Futures ETF
VanEck’s August 2024 Crypto Monthly Recap highlights several challenges contributing to the recent Ethereum price struggles.
According to VanEck’s report, Ethereum’s share of decentralized exchange trading volume has dropped significantly from 42% in 2022 to 29% in 2024.
The report attributes this decline to several factors, including a general decrease in network revenue, deliberate policy decisions, and competition from higher-throughput blockchains such as Solana, Sui, and Aptos. These competitors are drawing speculative demand away from Ethereum, exacerbating its price issues.
Additionally, Ethereum’s layer-1 revenues have been impacted by competing layer-2 networks, which have led to a 99% drop in network fees since the Dencun upgrade in March 2024. This has intensified the competition within Ethereum’s ecosystem and driven the proliferation of layer-2 solutions, with some critics suggesting that the current number of Ethereum scaling solutions exceeds the necessary demand.
VanEck’s decision to close EFUT while continuing to offer other crypto-related products, such as the Digital Assets Mining ETF (DAM) and Bitcoin Strategy ETF (XBTF), underscores the firm’s ongoing engagement with digital assets despite the challenges facing Ethereum.
Ethereum
Ethereum Sees Neutral Netflow On Binance: What Does This Signal?
Meet Samuel Edyme, Nickname – HIM-buktu. A web3 content writer, journalist, and aspiring trader, Edyme is as versatile as they come. With a knack for words and a nose for trends, he has penned pieces for numerous industry player, including AMBCrypto, Blockchain.News, and Blockchain Reporter, among others.
Edyme’s foray into the crypto universe is nothing short of cinematic. His journey began not with a triumphant investment, but with a scam. Yes, a Ponzi scheme that used crypto as payment roped him in. Rather than retreating, he emerged wiser and more determined, channeling his experience into over three years of insightful market analysis.
Before becoming the voice of reason in the crypto space, Edyme was the quintessential crypto degen. He aped into anything that promised a quick buck, anything ape-able, learning the ropes the hard way. These hands-on experience through major market events—like the Terra Luna crash, the wave of bankruptcies in crypto firms, the notorious FTX collapse, and even CZ’s arrest—has honed his keen sense of market dynamics.
When he isn’t crafting engaging crypto content, you’ll find Edyme backtesting charts, studying both forex and synthetic indices. His dedication to mastering the art of trading is as relentless as his pursuit of the next big story. Away from his screens, he can be found in the gym, airpods in, working out and listening to his favorite artist, NF. Or maybe he’s catching some Z’s or scrolling through Elon Musk’s very own X platform—(oops, another screen activity, my bad…)
Well, being an introvert, Edyme thrives in the digital realm, preferring online interaction over offline encounters—(don’t judge, that’s just how he is built). His determination is quite unwavering to be honest, and he embodies the philosophy of continuous improvement, or “kaizen,” striving to be 1% better every day. His mantras, “God knows best” and “Everything is still on track,” reflect his resilient outlook and how he lives his life.
In a nutshell, Samuel Edyme was born efficient, driven by ambition, and perhaps a touch fierce. He’s neither artistic nor unrealistic, and certainly not chauvinistic. Think of him as Bruce Willis in a train wreck—unflappable. Edyme is like trading in your car for a jet—bold. He’s the guy who’d ask his boss for a pay cut just to prove a point—(uhhh…). He is like watching your kid take his first steps. Imagine Bill Gates struggling with rent—okay, maybe that’s a stretch, but you get the idea, yeah. Unbelievable? Yes. Inconceivable? Perhaps.
Edyme sees himself as a fairly reasonable guy, albeit a bit stubborn. Normal to you is not to him. He is not the one to take the easy road, and why would he? That’s just not the way he roll. He has these favorite lyrics from NF’s “Clouds” that resonate deeply with him: “What you think’s probably unfeasible, I’ve done already a hundredfold.”
PS—Edyme is HIM. HIM-buktu. Him-mulation. Him-Kardashian. Himon and Pumba. He even had his DNA tested, and guess what? He’s 100% Him-alayan. Screw it, he ate the opp.
Ethereum
Analyst Reveals When The Ethereum Price Will Reach A New ATH, It’s Closer Than You Think
The Ethereum price has been consolidating for about a week since it hit a four-month high at $3,420. As the second largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum has the biggest price correlation with Bitcoin. However, you could argue the Ethereum price has been largely left behind in terms of performance throughout the ongoing bull cycle. Interestingly, a crypto analyst, Ben Lilly, has shared a bold prediction about the trajectory of the Ethereum price.
Taking to a post on the social media platform X, Ben Lilly forecasted that the Ethereum price will reach a new all-time high (ATH) between December 21, 2024, and January 7, 2025. The prediction stems from his analysis of the previous performance of the ETH price movements during Bitcoin’s ATH discovery phase in 2021.
A Historical Parallel: Ethereum’s 2021 Rally
In his analysis, Ben Lilly referenced Ethereum’s price behavior during the historic rally of the Bitcoin price in the 2021 bull run. At the time, the Ethereum price was trading nearly 60% below its 2018 peak. After Bitcoin broke out to fresh ATH levels, it took Ethereum five weeks to follow suit, rallying by about 640% to reach its current ATH of $4,878.
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Lilly believes the present market conditions mirror those of 2021, with the Bitcoin price recently entering price discovery mode. Ethereum, which was approximately 50% below its 2021 peak of $4,418 as of November 2024, has started to rebound, showing over 20% gains within just two weeks from a low of $2,366 on November 4.
Interestingly, the analyst’s comments suggest that as the Bitcoin price continues to set new price records this bull run, Ethereum is likely to follow with a substantial price leap very soon. The timeframe for this substantial price leap, he projects, aligns closely with late December 2024 and early January 2025.
Based on his projections, the analyst asserts that Ethereum could repeat its historical pattern and rally significantly within a short timeframe. He highlights that a 300% surge from Ethereum’s November 4 low price level could push it toward the $10,000 mark.
ETH will form a new ATH between Dec 21-Jan7.
I don’t make the rules. pic.twitter.com/NVgVdQ8Bsj
— Ben Lilly (@MrBenLilly) November 20, 2024
Current State Of The Ethereum Price
Ben Lilly’s Ethereum price prediction highlights the importance of the Bitcoin price momentum to that of the second-largest asset. Particularly, the 2021 pattern he pointed to is a result of an altcoin season where the altcoin market (led by Ethereum) started to outperform the Bitcoin price.
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As it stands, an altcoin season has yet to materialize this cycle, and all the interest is going into Bitcoin. The Bitcoin price is currently on an all-time high roll, meaning the market will have to continue to wait for the interest to roll into Ethereum.
At the time of writing, the ETH price is trading at $3,107 and is down by 3.84% in the past seven days.
Featured image created with Dall.E, chart from Tradingview.com
Ethereum
Ethereum A Ticking Bomb? Derivatives Metrics Break Records
Data shows the Ethereum derivatives-related metrics have shot up recently, a sign that the price is at risk of going through a volatile storm.
Ethereum Open Interest & Leverage Ratio Have Both Spiked Recently
In a CryptoQuant Quicktake post, an analyst has discussed about the trend in the derivatives indicators of Ethereum. The metrics in question are the Open Interest and the Estimated Leverage Ratio.
First, the Open Interest keeps track of the total amount of ETH-related contracts that are currently open on all derivatives platforms. The metric naturally takes into account for both long and short positions.
When the value of this metric rises, it means the investors are opening up fresh positions on the market. Such a trend suggests derivatives trading interest in the coin is going up.
On the other hand, the indicator registering a drawdown implies positions in the market are going down. This could be because of investors willfully closing them up, or due to exchanges forcibly liquidating them.
Now, here is a chart that shows the trend in the Ethereum Open Interest over the last few years:
The value of the metric appears to have been shooting up in recent days | Source: CryptoQuant
The above graph shows that the Ethereum Open Interest has witnessed rapid growth recently. It has surpassed the previous all-time high (ATH) to set a new record above $13 billion.
When considering the timeframe of the past four months, the indicator has increased by over 40%, which suggests an explosion in speculative interest around the cryptocurrency has occurred.
This development, however, may not be the healthiest, as the trend in the second indicator of relevance, the Estimated Leverage Ratio, would suggest. This metric measures the ratio between the Open Interest and the Derivatives Exchange Reserve.
The Derivatives Exchange Reserve is naturally just the total amount of the cryptocurrency sitting in wallets associated with all centralized derivatives exchanges.
The Estimated Leverage Ratio tells us the amount of leverage or loan that the average derivatives user in the Ethereum market is currently opting for.
Below is a chart for this indicator.
Looks like the value of the metric has been heading up over the last few weeks | Source: CryptoQuant
From the graph, it’s apparent that the Ethereum Estimated Leverage Ratio has shot up recently. This would mean that the increase in the Open Interest has been more rapid than the rise in the Derivatives Exchange Reserve.
The investors are now sitting on all-time high (ATH) leverage, which can be a bad sign for ETH as it implies any volatility in the future could take down the overleveraged positions and induce a mass liquidation event called a squeeze.
The quant has pointed out that the Ethereum Funding Rate, a ratio between long and short positions, is positive right now, which suggests that if a squeeze is to happen shortly, it’s more likely to involve the bullish side of the market.
ETH Price
At the time of writing, Ethereum is floating around $3,000, down almost 7% over the past week.
The price of the coin seems to have been consolidating sideways recently | Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView
Featured image from Dall-E, CryptoQuant.com, chart from TradingView.com
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