Bitwise Sees $20 Billion Institutional Surge Ahead for Ethereum

Ethereum (ETH) has experienced unprecedented demand over the last several weeks, amidst a surge in institutional interest. Based on this, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan warns of a looming historic price shock.

Meanwhile, the Ethereum price remains shy of the $4,000 psychological level, a threshold last tested in mid-December 2024.

Ethereum Faces Historic Demand Shock as Institutions Flood In

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and corporate treasuries have absorbed available Ethereum supply quickly over the past few weeks.

Against this backdrop, the Ethereum price has staged a powerful comeback after drifting lower in early 2025. More closely, the largest altcoin on market cap metrics is up by over 50% in the past month and more than 150% since its April lows.

According to Hougan, the tailwinds sprout from institutional accumulation, vastly outpacing Ethereum’s net issuance.

“Since May 15, spot Ethereum ETPs have been on a tear, pulling in more than $5 billion…By our estimates, ETPs and corporate treasuries have combined to buy 2.83 million ETH—more than $10 billion at today’s prices. That’s 32x net new supply over the same period,” Hougan said in a thread.

This marks a sharp departure from the previous trend. While Ethereum ETFs launched in July 2024, their impact remained modest through mid-May 2025, with just $2.5 billion in inflows. Supply and demand were roughly balanced during that time, leading to a sideways market.

However, the tides shifted quickly in recent weeks as institutional flows surged and corporate entities like BitMine and SharpLink Gaming announced Ethereum treasury strategies.

The development mirrors Bitcoin’s run-up over the past 18 months, where BTC ETFs and corporate buyers like MicroStrategy (now Strategy) snapped up more than 100% of newly minted BTC.

It seems Ethereum is now entering a similar accumulation phase, albeit with far more aggressive buying relative to new issuance. The Bitwise executive sees no signs of a slowdown.

“ETP investors remain significantly underweight Ethereum vs. Bitcoin,” he noted.

Ethereum Still Undervalued vs Bitcoin, But $20 Billion Institutional Surge Ahead

Hougan points out that Ethereum’s market cap ($449.8 billion) is less than 19% of Bitcoin’s ($2.3 trillion). Additionally, Ethereum ETFs hold just under 12% of the assets managed by Bitcoin ETFs.

However, with surging interest in stablecoins and tokenization, Bitwise expects strong ETH ETF inflows for a long time to come.

This aligns with a recent BeInCrypto report, which forecasted the best month for Ethereum ETFs since their Approval in May 2024.

“With net inflows of $564.2 million in May, $1.17 billion in June, and an additional $507.4 million so far in July, the U.S. Ethereum ETFs have shown strong recent performance. Yesterday’s net inflow of $211.3 million marked the eighth-best day on record,” wrote crypto analyst Mads Eberhardt in a recent post.

Corporate adoption is also poised to accelerate, with treasury strategies gaining traction. Hougan believes the trend will persist as long as ETH-holding public companies continue to trade at a premium to the value of their assets.

“Full steam ahead,” he chimed.

The latest remarks reinforce his earlier forecast from July 2. As BeInCrypto reported, Hougan said that Ethereum ETFs will likely dominate the second half (H2) of 2025.

Bitwise now projects that ETPs and treasury firms could purchase as much as $20 billion worth of Ethereum over the next year, which translates to around 5.33 million Ether tokens.

By contrast, Ethereum’s projected net issuance is just 800,000 ETH tokens, setting up a potential 7:1 demand-to-supply imbalance.

“In the short term, the price of everything is set by supply and demand…And for the time being, there is significantly more demand for ETH than there is new supply,” Hougan concluded.

As of this writing, Ethereum was trading for $3,716, up by a modest 0.82% in the last 24 hours.