BlackRock Inflows, Robinhood Chain Push Ether Up 11% as Bitcoin Stalls
Ether has surged 11% this week on concentrated BlackRock ETF inflows and new gas demand from Robinhood Chain, highlighting a divergence in institutional crypto allocation.
Ether rose 11% over the past seven days to trade near $1,920 on Thursday, breaking away from a flat or negative broader crypto market. The $231 billion market cap asset is drawing strength from highly concentrated institutional inflows and a newly launched layer-2 network, rather than macroeconomic drivers like the softer U.S. inflation print earlier in the week. While ether notched a 2.2% daily gain, most large-cap tokens lagged severely; Solana, TRON, and Hyperliquid all declined on the day.
U.S. spot ether ETFs attracted $96 million in the first three days of this week, already surpassing the $84 million gathered in the entire prior week. The inflows mark a sharp recovery from late June, when the funds shed $82 million in a single day. By contrast, U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs remain directionless, shedding $424 million on July 13 before taking back $181 million the next day.
The ether demand is overwhelmingly landing in BlackRock's low-fee products. Of the $53.8 million that arrived on Wednesday, BlackRock's ETHA fund absorbed $45.3 million and its smaller ETHB fund took $4 million, leaving the remaining eight funds to split less than $5 million. This dynamic has punished higher-cost competitors, with Grayscale’s 2.5% fee ether trust bleeding $5.3 billion since its launch compared to BlackRock's 0.25% fee.
Beyond the funds, ether is capturing real-time network demand following the July 1 debut of Robinhood Chain. The layer-2 network uses ether for gas fees and settles transactions on the Ethereum mainnet. It is currently processing over $800 million in daily decentralized exchange volume, heavily driven by memecoin trading.
Bitcoin is showing resilience despite its choppy ETF flows. On-chain data indicates exchange outflows have held steady amid Middle East escalation, and investors are not rotating into stablecoins. Funding rates near zero suggest the overleveraged long positions that triggered June's liquidation cascades have already been cleared, leaving bitcoin dominance at 58.3%.
The divergent performance underscores a maturing market where fee structures and network utility are dictating capital allocation. This shift is occurring against a backdrop of recovering broader market activity, as centralized exchange spot volumes climbed 15.3% to $1.11 trillion in June, marking the first monthly increase in five months. Real-world asset perpetual volumes also surged to a record $311 billion.
