Ether ETFs post $197M outflows on Monday, second-largest ever

Spot Ether funds started a new week with a major sell-off, posting almost $200 million in outflows on Monday in extending a trend that started last week.

Spot Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw $196.7 million of outflows, marking their second-largest daily outflow since launching. Monday’s outflows were only topped by $465 million on Aug. 4, according to SoSoValue.

The latest outflows followed Friday’s $59 million, bringing the two-day total to $256 million.

Still, the outflows remained modest compared with the record $3.7 billion inflow streak over the previous eight trading days, when some single-day inflows topped $1 billion.

BlackRock’s ETHA sees $87 million in outflows

According to Farside data, BlackRock and Fidelity saw the biggest ETH ETF outflows among issuers on Monday, totaling $87 million and $79 million, respectively.

On Friday, Fidelity’s Ethereum Fund (FETH) posted $272 million in outflows, significantly contributing to the total $59 million in daily outflows.

BlackRock has become one of the largest institutional holders of Ether. According to official data for the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA), the fund held about 3.6 million ETH, valued at $15.8 billion, as of Friday.

Since then, the dollar value of ETHA’s holdings has declined by 1.5% to the $15.6 billion reported on Monday.

In this period, the ETH price has tumbled around 6.5%, according to CoinGecko.

Ether unstaking queue repeatedly hits new highs

The record Ether ETF outflows and turbulent ETH prices come amid an ongoing surge in the Ether unstaking queue, or the amount of Ether awaiting withdrawal from staking pools by Ethereum validators.

According to ValidatorQueue, a third-party website tracking the validator queues on the Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS) network, the validator’s exit line broke an all-time high of 910,000 ETH worth about $3.9 billion on Tuesday.

The data also suggested that validators now have to wait at least 15 days and 14 hours to unstake their ETH.

Some crypto market observers have highlighted the potentially negative outcomes of the ongoing ETH unstaking queue growth, warning of a looming “unstakening.”

“The flippening will never happen but the unstakening is coming,” Bitcoin (BTC) advocate Samson Mow wrote on X last Thursday.

Related: Ether trader turns $125K into $43M, locks in $7M after market downturn

He also suggested that the price of ETH related to BTC may revert to “0.03 or lower.” At the time of writing, Ether traded at 0.036 BTC, according to TradingView.

Ether ETFs gain ground versus Bitcoin ETFs

Spot Ether ETFs have been flipping Bitcoin ETFs in terms of inflows the past few weeks, reflecting a growing investor appetite for ETH over BTC.

According to data by Hildobby, a data analyst at Dragonfly, the ratio of BTC supply versus BTC held in ETFs was at 6.4% as of Monday, compared to a 5% ratio for ETH and Ether ETFs.

“If the current growth rate continues, the ETH-ETF will surpass the BTC-ETF in terms of the percentage of total supply contained by September,” the analyst predicted on Monday.

Magazine: Coinbase calls for ‘full-scale’ alt season, Ether eyes $6K: Hodler’s Digest, Aug. 10 – 16