Ethereum Price Jumps 10% as Grayscale ETF Outflows Slow

Ethereum jumped by double-digits Friday morning to over $2,700, outpacing Bitcoin and Solana as the crypto market continued to recover ground lost during Monday's crash.

The price of Ethereum is currently around $2,664, up 9.6% on the day, per data from CoinGecko—though it remains down by over 15% on the week.

Volume is up by 5% in the past day, while open interest has jumped by 15%, per data from Coinglass. That suggests investors are feeling more confident in Ethereum's trajectory, something mirrored in the wider crypto market as the Crypto Fear & Greed Index returned to "neutral" after plunging to levels not seen since the collapse of FTX, earlier in the week.

That's been helped by the fact that large scale holders like venture capital firms Jump Crypto and Paradigm have backed off their rush to liquidate assets. On Sunday, before markets opened the week in chaos, blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence noted that Jump had started moving significant portions of its $243 million worth crypto—including a sizable stash of ETH—with some of it heading for exchanges.

As of this writing, Jump Trading's Ethereum balance is sitting just above $15 million, according to Arkham, after having increased by $1 million in the past day.

Just yesterday, financial analysts noted that Ethereum was "trading horrible" in the current market cycle—and indeed the ETH-to-BTC conversion ratio remains around 0.043, just above its yearly low of 0.041.

Others, however, argued that Ethereum needs more time to shine, with U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs live for less than a fortnight. Theoretically, the arrival of spot Ethereum ETFs should be bullish for the cryptocurrency, since it allows institutions a regulated way to gain exposure to Ethereum. But, FarsideUK CIO Jonathan Bier cautioned, much of the momentum will be driven by investors "shifting their existing [Ethereum Trust] holdings into ETFs."

Ethereum ETFs saw net outflows of just $2.9 million Thursday, per data from Farside Investors. Outflows from Grayscale's Ethereum Trust (ETHE) slowed to $19.8 million—though Fidelity's FETH saw its first day of outflows since launch.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.