Ethereum’s market dominance climbed back above 10% on Tuesday after weeks below that level, while the token outperformed every other top-10 cryptocurrency with an almost 9% gain in the last seven days.
The move has rekindled bullish sentiment around $ETH, even though one analyst is cautioning that no single event appears to have triggered the latest rally.
$ETH Retakes 10% Market Share as Sentiment Improves
Data from CoinGecko shows Ethereum’s market cap at around $233.2 billion, with the total crypto market up nearly 2% and valued at just over $2.34 trillion. That put $ETH’s share of the market at slightly more than 10%, a figure BIT analyst Markus Thielen described as a “psychologically important” threshold in a July 21 update.
Thielen also noted that when $ETH dominance rose in the past, it often coincided with conditions that favored bullish traders. Indeed, at the time of writing, $ETH had gained over 4% in 24 hours, but according to the analyst, there was “no immediate catalyst” behind the rise in dominance.
Some big names in the market appear to have picked up on the changing mood, with BitMEX co-founder and avid crypto trader Arthur Hayes spending over $2.5 million on 1,332.5 $ETH earlier today. That was his second multi-million dollar splurge on the token in a week after earlier buying 1,293 others for a similar amount on June 16.
BIT’s weekly market watch, also published on July 21, argued that last week’s softer-than-expected US inflation data had reversed a rough start to the week, one that had briefly pushed Bitcoin ($BTC) under $62,000 after conflict between the US and Iran flared again. $BTC closed that week above $65,000, up almost 4%, while $ETH added over 7% in the same period, ending up above $1,900 and marking its second consecutive week of outperforming Bitcoin. This also lifted the $ETH/$BTC ratio to 0.0293 from a June low of 0.0264.
Institutional Positioning Shifts Toward Ethereum
At the time of writing, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency was still trading well over the $1,900 mark, having gained about 8.8% in one week and more than 12% in the last 30 days.
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That weekly performance was the best among the top ten digital assets by market cap, with $XRP and $BTC following closely after jumping more than 6% in $XRP’s case and about 5.7% in $BTC’s case in that period. $ETH’s daily trading volume also saw a huge uptick, adding more than 31% to the previous day’s amount to hit $11.6 billion.
Beyond spot prices, BIT’s report said perpetual funding rates have remained close to neutral despite $ETH’s gains, while implied volatility stayed relatively subdued.
It also noted that institutional investors appeared to favor call options, with buy-call activity accounting for more than three-quarters of Ethereum block trades, while retail participants largely opted for call spreads to gain upside exposure with limited cost.
