Ether Leads Bitcoin as ETF Inflows Return, Dominated by BlackRock

Here’s a clear and refined paraphrased version:

This isn’t a broad-based market rally. While bitcoin has gained around 4% over the same period, other major tokens like solana, TRON, and hyperliquid have all declined.

In fact, ether stands out as the only large-cap crypto showing notable strength this week, and Tuesday’s softer U.S. inflation data alone doesn’t fully explain its outperformance.

Ether was trading near $1,920 on Thursday, rising 2.2% on the day and roughly 11% over the past week, giving it a market capitalization of about $231 billion with around $12 billion in daily trading volume. Bitcoin, by comparison, hovered around $64,600, slipping 0.3% on the day but still up 4.2% over the week. Beyond these two, most of the market has turned negative.

Solana dropped 1.1% to $77 and is down over the past seven days. TRON fell to $0.32, losing 1.6% on the week, while hyperliquid’s HYPE declined 1.8% to $66 and is off 1.7%. XRP, BNB, and dogecoin each posted weekly gains of just over 2% — only a fraction of ether’s move.

Two key drivers appear to be supporting ether’s strength this week.

First, U.S. spot ether ETFs have seen renewed inflows. According to SoSoValue, these funds attracted $96 million in the first three days of the week, already surpassing the $84 million recorded for the entirety of the previous week. This follows a period of outflows in late June, including a single-day loss of $82 million on June 25.

Bitcoin ETFs, however, have shown inconsistent flows. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs saw $424 million exit on July 13, only to take back $181 million the following day — a pattern that suggests short-term trading rather than steady institutional accumulation.

This makes ether’s demand more concentrated. Of the $53.8 million in inflows on Wednesday, BlackRock’s ETHA fund accounted for $45.3 million, while its smaller ETHB fund brought in $4 million. The remaining eight products shared less than $5 million combined.

Meanwhile, Grayscale’s original ether trust — which charges a higher 2.5% fee compared to BlackRock’s 0.25% — has seen cumulative outflows of $5.3 billion since launch.

Ether has also benefited from a new source of demand that emerged recently. Robinhood’s layer-2 network, Robinhood Chain, launched on July 1, uses ether for gas fees and settles transactions on Ethereum. The network is already processing over $800 million in daily decentralized exchange volume, much of it driven by memecoin trading.

Despite ETF volatility, bitcoin itself appears relatively stable. Data from Nansen shows consistent exchange outflows even amid escalating tensions in the Middle East, with no significant shift into stablecoins — a move that typically signals investors stepping back.

Funding rates remain near neutral levels, indicating that the highly leveraged long positions responsible for June’s liquidation events have largely been cleared. Bitcoin dominance currently stands at 58.3%.