Ethereum ETF Drama: Diamond Hands Meet a Harsh Price Reality

by

I’ve learned to treat market headlines like the stray receipts stuffed into a wallet you never clean out: eventually they surface with a sniff of drama and a layer of regret. Ethereum ETF investors, it seems, are starring in a melodrama titled Diamond Hands, except the prop department forgot to tell the price. ETH is hovering around $2,000, which is charming in a way that a thrift-store sweater can be charming-if you’re entirely certain you’ll never wear it again. The average cost basis for these ETF holders sits near $3,500, which makes their entry point look less like a bargain and more like a mispriced attic treasure.

Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart summed this up with the clinical warmth of a dentist appointment: Ethereum ETF holders are in a worse position than their Bitcoin ETF brethren. The current ETH price of $2,000 is well below their average cost basis of about $3,500. It’s a painful proposition. But it’s one that Eth ETF holders have already experienced, which is the investment world’s way of offering a consolation prize you didn’t want in the first place.

Seyffart also noted that the most recent ETH ETF trough pushed the drawdown beyond 60%, roughly matching the percentage decline ETH saw at its April 2025 low. A little deja vu, a lot of panic-just enough to keep you from making small talk at cocktail parties about “the cycle.” The move was severe, but not unprecedented for ether’s fan club, which has learned to applaud awkward math as if it were performance art.

Still, the investor response has been stoic to a fault. “The vast majority of buyers have stayed put,” he wrote, pointing to net inflows across the ETH ETF complex falling from roughly $15 billion to below $12 billion-a deterioration larger than Bitcoin ETFs on a relative basis, but, in his words, “still fairly decent diamond hands in grand scheme (for now).” The phrase sounds like a motivational poster that got misplaced in a finance white paper, but there it is-the investment world’s version of grit, or stubbornness, or both.

Fresh flow data suggests the bleeding has slowed, but not flipped decisively. SoSoValue data shows US spot ether ETFs took in about $13.82 million in net inflows on Feb. 10, following a week of net redemptions totaling roughly $166 million. It’s the financial equivalent of a band-aid on a cactus: the movement is minimal, but you notice it when you touch it.

On a monthly basis, SoSoValue pegs last month’s net flow at about $350 million in outflows. Cumulatively, total net assets are at $11.76 billion as of Feb. 10, which sounds impressive until you realize the headline numbers were more dramatic when they were in the thousands and the bills came with responsible-sounding acronyms.

Goldman Sachs Is Bullish On Ethereum

Against that backdrop, Goldman Sachs’ latest 13F disclosure adds a different kind of theater: traditional finance’s exposure is suddenly visible, and not confined to Bitcoin. On Tuesday, Goldman disclosed about $2.36 billion in crypto-related positions, including roughly $1.06 billion tied to spot Bitcoin ETFs and about $1.0 billion to spot Ethereum ETFs, alongside smaller exposures of about $153 million in XRP and $108 million in Solana-roughly 0.33% of its broader holdings.

The reactions on X leaned into the optics. Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao framed the filing as a positioning gap between crypto natives and banks: “Crypto is probably the only place you had an earlier start than the banks. But if you sold your crypto last quarter, while the banks are buying, then…”

MoonRock Capital founder Simon Dedic focused on the ETH sizing itself: “Very interesting to see them holding almost as much ETH as Bitcoin. For a conservative investment bank that typically sticks to standard portfolio structures like market cap weighting, this speaks volumes on how they’re significantly more bullish on Ethereum than Bitcoin, which would normally be 4-6x larger in such portfolios. This is the institutional supercycle, and ETH is clearly the institutional darling.”

At press time, ETH traded at $1,949, a number that sounds like a punchline you tell yourself at 6 a.m. while the coffee machine rebels against your ambitions.

Read More

2026-02-11 18:16