US spot bitcoin ETFs shed $325.8 million on 13 April while ether funds posted their strongest weekly inflows of 2026, and on-chain data shows Ethereum daily transactions jumped 41 per cent in a single week.
Something shifted in the institutional plumbing last week, and it showed up in the ETF flow data before it showed up anywhere else.
US spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds recorded $325.8 million in net outflows on 13 April — the largest single-day redemption since February's record-breaking exodus. Fidelity's FBTC led the retreat with $229 million walking out the door; ARK and 21Shares' ARKB followed with $63 million. The outflows extended a pattern that has dogged bitcoin funds for most of April, with net inflows for the month cooling to just $69.59 million after March delivered a comparatively robust $1.32 billion.
Ether funds, by contrast, are having their best stretch of the year. Weekly inflows into US spot ether ETFs climbed to $187 million for the period ending 10 April — the strongest seven-day showing since the products launched — while daily inflows on 13 April came in at $7.7 million. The divergence isn't subtle. Capital that had been parked in bitcoin wrappers is rotating into ethereum exposure, and the on-chain data suggests there may be a reason beyond simple mean reversion.
Ethereum's network posted 3.6 million daily transactions last week, a 41 per cent increase over the prior seven days. The surge pushes activity to levels not seen since the post-Merge excitement of late 2022, and it coincides with ethereum's stablecoin supply hitting an all-time high of $180 billion — roughly 60 per cent of all stablecoins across every blockchain. USDT accounts for $80.7 billion of that figure, with USDC at $51.8 billion; together they make up nearly three-quarters of Ethereum's stablecoin float.
But there's an odd wrinkle in the data that should temper any unqualified bullishness. While transactions surged 41 per cent, stablecoin transfer volume fell 42.6 per cent over the same period. More activity, less economic value behind it. That combination can mean several things — a spike in low-value DeFi interactions, bot-driven traffic, or a rotation into governance and staking activity that doesn't move large dollar amounts — but none of them screams organic demand in the way a simultaneous rise in both metrics would.
Ether was trading at roughly $2,130 on Monday, against bitcoin's $69,000. The price gap between the two assets has compressed since February, when bitcoin was still comfortably above $88,000 and ether was struggling to hold $1,800. The rotation into ether ETFs accelerated after BlackRock's IBIT — which still holds more than $70 billion in assets and attracted $8.4 billion in net inflows during Q1 alone — began shedding capital alongside the broader bitcoin ETF outflow trend that started in February.
The question institutional allocators are now wrestling with isn't whether ethereum deserves a bid — the network's 30 per cent staking ratio, its dominance of stablecoin issuance, and its position as the settlement layer for tokenised real-world assets all argue that it does. The question is whether the current rotation is structural or tactical. A $187 million weekly inflow into ether ETFs is meaningful relative to the product's history, but it remains a rounding error next to bitcoin's cumulative $18.7 billion in Q1 flows.
Macro conditions aren't making the call any easier. Geopolitical risk — the collapse of US-Iran talks in Islamabad, a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and Friday's CPI print showing the sharpest inflation jump in two years — has weighed on risk assets broadly. Bitcoin, which once traded as a geopolitical hedge, has spent the last two months tracking the S&P 500 with uncomfortable fidelity.
Ethereum's activity surge, decoupled from its stablecoin volume, suggests a network that is busier but not necessarily richer. Whether the ETF flows follow the transactions or the value will determine which side of this rotation is right.
