Original | Odaily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
On December 29, Eugene Ng Ah Sio, a highly influential trader in the cryptocurrency community, posted his outlook and expectations for the first quarter of 2025 on X, predicting that ETH will be the best-performing mainstream token in the next quarter.
Eugene first mentioned three reasons for being bullish on ETH: technical trends; Trump's favor (especially WLFI's massive buying of the Ethereum ecosystem); and the development status of the Base ecosystem. He then reiterated that since Trump's election, the capital inflow into the TRON spot ETF has undergone a 180-degree turnaround.
ETF Capital Movements: Is Ethereum More Favored?
Eugene did not exaggerate, as SoSoValue data shows that since Trump's victory on November 6, the capital inflow into the TRON spot ETF has increased significantly, with the growth trend even surpassing that of the BTC spot ETF during the same period.
This trend has become even more evident in late December.
SoSoValue data shows that during the last trading week (December 23 to December 27, Eastern Time), the TRON spot ETF had a net inflow of $349 million, while the BTC spot ETF had a net outflow of $388 million - this significant difference in capital movements may indicate better expectations for the future performance of ETH.
As of the time of writing, the official ETF inflow/outflow data for this Monday has not been fully published yet, but according to Lookonchain's on-chain monitoring,yesterday, the ten US BTC ETFs had a net outflow of 3,000 BTC ($275.59 million); the nine TRON ETFs had a net inflow of 16,359 ETH ($54.33 million), and the trend seems to remain unchanged.
The Trump Concept Basket
In addition to the flow data of ETFs, another reason supporting the expectations for ETH is the continuous position-building by the Trump family project WLFI.
Over the past period, WLFI has successively bought AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO and other Ethereum ecosystem tokens, but the largest holding of the project is still ETH.
Although this is also related to the fact that WIFI is deployed on the Ethereum ecosystem, the statement "the president has boarded the train, what are you still hesitating about" still has a strong FOMO effect.
Looking Back at Historical Data, Will the Script Repeat Itself?
Coinglass data shows that in the first quarter of the new year after the US elections and the Bitcoin halving cycles, ETH has performed the best, especially in the first quarters of 2017 and 2021, when ETH rose 518% and 161% respectively, even surpassing the returns of BTC in those two quarters (11.9%, 103.2%).
If history repeats itself, ETH may see a significant rise in Q1 next year.
Potential Beta Choices
If ETH does rise as expected, some Ethereum ecosystem tokens may become higher risk/return Beta choices, such as:
Trump concept token basket: AAVE, LINK, ENA, ONDO;
Grayscale Top 20 choices: LINK, UNI, AAVE, ENA, OP, LDO;
Potential benefits from ETF staking: LDO, EIGEN, RPL, SSV;
Ethereum ecosystem leading AI concepts: VIRTUAL, GAME, AIXBT;
Odaily Note: The above tokens are only listed for specific sectors and concepts, and do not constitute investment advice.
Opposing Views
Although many well-known investors/traders, including Eugene, have openly expressed their bullishness on ETH, there are also voices that hold a pessimistic view on the future performance of ETH.
Markus Thielen, founder of 10x Research, has painted a more pessimistic scenario, predicting that ETH will continue to underperform and will not be able to set a new all-time high in 2025 under the "hawkish" macroeconomic environment: "We expect a more conservative outlook for ETH in 2025. Unlike previous years, the initial hawkish policies may be challenged by weakening liquidity tailwinds."
At a time when the market is experiencing violent fluctuations, the forecasts given by various parties are merely "partial conclusions" based on the conditions and indicators they focus on, and no one can predict the future. Everyone should remember to DYOR before taking any action.
