According to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst James Seyffart, ETF investors are at a much worse entry point than their bitcoin counterparts, with ETH spot funds currently absorbing declines that have left many buyers deeply underwater.
“Ethereum ETF holders are in a worse situation than their Bitcoin ETF brethren,” Seyffart he wrote on X slow Tuesday. “ETH’s current price of $2,000 is well below their average underlying cost to ETF holders of ~$3,500. This is a painful proposition. But ETF holders have already experienced this.”
Seyffart added that the recent lows for the ETH ETF resulted in a decline of “over 60%,” roughly matching the percentage decline seen by ETH at its April 2025 low, calling the move severe but not unprecedented for the ether investor base.
Still, he argued that investor reaction has been more stoic than price action suggests. “Despite this, the vast majority of buyers remained in place,” he wrote, pointing out that net inflows for the entire ETH ETF complicated have dropped from around $15 billion to under $12 billion, a much greater deterioration than the Bitcoin ETF “on a relative basis,” but in his words “still pretty decent diamond hands in the grand scheme (for now).”
Fresh flow data suggest that bleeding has slowed but not dramatically reversed. SoSoValue data shows that on February 10, U.S. spot ether ETFs recorded net inflows of approximately $13.82 million. This followed a week of net redemptions totaling approximately $166 million, extending a multi-week streak of outflows.
On a monthly basis, SoSoValue data estimates net flow last month to be approximately $350 million. Total net assets as of February 10 are $11.76 billion.
Goldman Sachs is bullish on Ethereum
Against this backdrop, Goldman Sachs’ latest 13F disclosure added a different kind of signal: time-honored finance exposure is becoming more observable, and it’s not circumscribed to bitcoin. On Tuesday, Goldman disclosed about $2.36 billion in cryptocurrency positions, including about $1.06 billion tied to spot bitcoin ETFs and about $1.0 billion in spot ether ETFs, along with smaller exposures of about $153 million in XRP and $108 million in Solana – representing about 0.33% of the allocation in the context of broader assets.
Reactions to X were about optics. Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao framed reporting as a positioning gap between crypto natives and banks: “Crypto is probably the only place you started earlier 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 sheer size of ETH: “Very interesting to see that they hold almost as much ETH as Bitcoin. For a conservative investment bank that typically sticks to standard portfolio structures such as market cap weighting, it says a lot that they are much more bullish on Ethereum than Bitcoin, which would normally be 4-6 times larger in such portfolios. This is an institutional supercycle, and ETH is undoubtedly the institutional darling.”
At the time of publication, the price of ETH was $1,949.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
