Ether (ETH) traded at $3,310, up 11% year-to-date, as renewed ETF buying and record on-chain 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 exploded, 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.
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.
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 Jan. 15, according to Nansen data.
The last time Ethereum’s daily activity addresses saw these levels was on Sept. 13, 2023, when the metric surged to approximately 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 Jan. 16, according to data from 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.”
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 that an extended rally to $5,500, based on Fibonacci retracement analysis, as shown below.
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