Ethereum – Can investment advisors’ $1.35 billion bet push ETH above $5K in Q3?

Key Takeaways

Investment advisors increased ETH exposure to client portfolios in Q2, as per Bloomberg’s latest data. Will the trend push ETH higher above $5k on the charts?

Investment advisors have emerged as the top holders of Spot Ethereum [ETH] ETFs, surpassing even hedge fund managers.  

In fact, according to Bloomberg data, investment advisors had about $1.35 billion worth of exposure in ETH – Nearly double the position held by hedge funds with figures of $687 million. 

Good for ETH?

The 2x more ETH holdings held by investment advisors is a great “trend shift.” Especially since they mean these firms could allocate more ETH to client portfolios, noted one analyst. 

“Still relatively small, but if this is the start of a trend shift towards a percentage allocation of their clients’ portfolios to ETH, this number can rapidly increase.”

Among the top firms, Goldman Sachs led the adoption of ETH ETFs in Q2 with figures of $721 million.

Jane Street and Millennium Management came in second and third, respectively, according to 13F filings aggregated by Bloomberg. 

Collectively, Spot ETH ETFs have seen remarkable growth since Q2. So far, the products are on track to hit $10 billion in net inflows since July. 

At press time, the monthly inflows stood at $3.69 billion while July inflows jumped to a record high of $5.43 billion. That’s $9.12 billion total inflows in Q3, figures which drove ETH’s price to a new all-time high of $4.95k. 

Worth pointing out, however, that Standard Chartered revised its ETH price target from $4k to $7.5k for 2025, citing crypto treasury demand. A similar projection is being priced in across the Options market on Deribit too.

In the near term though, traders have been pricing in only a 6.5% chance of ETH rallying to $5k in August. On the contrary, the odds surged to 37% for September – A sign that the market expects ETH to top the level by the end of Q3. 

Finally, the chances of tagging $7.5k by December 2025 were still low at 16% at press time. 

If the remarkable ETH treasury demand trend continues, the aforementioned high price targets could be reachable. 

However, some market watchers have warned that the recently released Google blockchain GCUL could dent ETH’s market share in the long term.  Additionally, on-chain analyst James Checkmate cautioned that if Google cracks the distribution effect, the ETH accrual narrative could fade. 

It remains to be seen whether Google will be a threat to ETH in the next few months. In the meantime, the ETF inflows and crypto treasury trend could push the altcoin higher before Google risk materializes.