This ETH rally feels different

Something we haven’t seen in over 5 months: Ethereum is back above $3K. Finally.

And not just that – it’s actually outperformed most other major coins during this rally.

So, what’s goin’ on?

Well, thing is, it’s not your usual army of degens running things this time. As we discussed yesterday, retail traders are still nowhere to be seen.

This rally is powered by institutions.

And their attitude toward Ethereum is changing.

One big clue: Ethereum ETFs had $1.5B of inflows just this month.

On top of that, more and more public companies are adding ETH to their corporate treasuries – just like Strategy did with Bitcoin.

Altogether, these companies bought ~545K ETH in the past month, worth around $1.7B at today’s prices.

Some of the biggest dawgs in that department so far:

👉 SharpLink Gaming: ~280K ETH;

👉 BitMine Immersion Technologies: ~163K ETH;

👉 Bit Digital: ~100K ETH (after selling off their Bitcoin to move to ETH).

And… why are they bullish on ETH? Let’s break it down 👇

1/ Copying the Bitcoin treasury thesis – but with more upside

Companies saw how much shareholder value Strategy unlocked just by holding BTC and turning itself into a “Bitcoin proxy.”

Now they’re trying to do the same thing with Ethereum – where there’s way less competition and more room to define the narrative.

In other words, they don’t wanna be Strategy 2.0 (or like 150.0 at this point)… they wanna be the Strategy of ETH.

2/ Productivity

Unlike Bitcoin, which just sits there, ETH is productive.

You can stake it and earn 3 – 6% yield annually.

For a treasury, that’s a big plus: upside and income.

3/ Tokenization

One of the hottest narratives this year is tokenization – turning real-world assets like stocks into digital tokens.

And guess which blockchain dominates here? Yuuup – Ethereum.

So, betting on tokenization means betting on Ethereum to deliver as the underlying infrastructure – and holding ETH is equally a bet that tokenization will keep fueling its growth.

4/ Stablecoins

Stablecoins are basically eating the world:

• Market cap now $200B+, up over 2,000% since 2020;

• Stablecoin transfers hit $27.6T in 2024, more than Visa and Mastercard combined.

And the biggest stablecoins – like USDT, USDC, and DAI – have most of their activity on Ethereum (and its Layer-2s).

So every time someone moves them there, they pay fees in ETH.

This means: holding ETH = exposure to a big chunk of the stablecoin ecosystem.

And what does all this mean?

The more institutions embrace ETH as a strategic, long-term asset, the more its price starts reflecting real, sticky demand – not just hype from retail traders.

That’s a solid, medium-to-long-term bullish case.