Ethereum ETF buying outpaces new supply: Will it push ETH price to $4.5K?

Ether (ETH) traded at $3,310, up 11% year-to-date, as renewed ETF buying and record onchain activity placed it on a path toward $4,500 over the next few weeks.

Key takeaways:

• Spot Ethereum ETFs recorded $474.6 million in inflows over four days, outpacing new supply amid a surge in institutional buying.
• Ethereum network activity grew, with active addresses rising to a 28-month high.
• Traders expect ETH to rally to $4,500 as long as key support levels hold.

Ethereum ETFs attract nearly $500 million

Ether has seen a sharp increase in demand from institutional investors that have recently increased their ETH exposure through spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Data from Farside Investors reveals that US-based spot Ethereum ETFs have recorded inflows over four straight days, totaling $474.6 million.

Related: Ether’s price vs. fundamentals gap may signal 2026 opportunity

The $175.1 million recorded on Wednesday was the highest since Dec. 9, 2025, and marked the largest single-day inflows of 2026.

Spot Ethereum ETF flows table. Source: Farside Investors

Daily institutional buying, including both DATs and ETFs, has also risen to net buying of 6,964 ETH per day, according to data from Capriole Investments.

Ethereum: Daily rate of institutional buying. Source: Capriole Investments

Although monthly and weekly volumes continue to decline for Ethereum treasury companies, there are a few active players, such as Bitmine, led by Wall Street strategist Tom Lee, which continue to add ETH.

While inflows have grabbed attention this week, a return to steady institutional demand is necessary for a sustained ETH price recovery.

Ethereum’s network activity is “exploding”

Ethereum’s network activity continues to show strength, with active addresses increasing by 53% over the last 30 days, reaching a 28-month high of 995,779 on Thursday, according to Nansen data.

Daily active addresses on Ethereum. Source: Nansen

The last time Ethereum’s daily activity addresses saw these levels was on Sept. 13, 2023, when the metric surged to about 1.09 million — the second-highest level in the network’s history, only behind a peak of around 1.4 million in December 2022.

The daily transaction count has also reached a record high of 2.9 million on Friday, according to data from DefiLlama.

Ethereum DEX volume and App fees. Source: DefiLlama

“Daily Ethereum transactions are exploding,” said YouTuber CryptoRover in an X post on Friday, reacting to the network’s milestone.

“Ethereum smashed a new ATH with 2.6M daily transactions and gas fees are below $0.01!!!,” fellow analyst FenoXBT said, adding:

“This is what real scaling looks like.”

Analysts say Ether’s price is “going higher”

At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $3,300, up 7.3% over the last seven days.

As Cointelegraph reported, holding above the $3,050-3,170 demand zone is crucial to ETH’s upside prospects and sets the stage for a possible rally above $4,000.

The 50-week exponential moving average sits within this zone, and a weekly close above this trendline was necessary to secure the bullish weekly structure, according to trader Coinvo Trading.

“The weekly structure stays intact, ETH is going higher.”

Source: Coinvo Trading

According to Crypto Rover, ETH is ready to explode as it shows strength after breaking out of a symmetrical triangle. The target of this triangle pattern on the daily chart is $4,500, according to data from TradingView.

However, Crypto Rover shared a chart suggesting an extended rally to $5,500, based on Fibonacci retracement analysis, as shown below.

ETH/USD daily chart. Source: Crypto Rover