Ethereum sees price upgrade as Citigroup downgrades Bitcoin projections

Citigroup raised its year-end outlook for Ether from $4,300 to $4,500, citing the increased inflow into ETFs and digital asset treasuries. The investment bank also lowered its Bitcoin forecast from $135,000 to $133,000, citing macro factors, such as weaker gold prices and a stronger dollar.

At the time of publication, Ethereum was trading at $4,376.55, representing a 5.36% increase for the day. ETH has also increased by more than 72% in the past 12 months. Bitcoin is trading at $118,480, a 3.21% surge in the last 24 hours. BTC is also up 92% in the last 12 months.

Citigroup says ETF inflow fuels Ethereum’s momentum

Citigroup attributed the growth to Layer-2s, noting that only 30% have passed through Ethereum’s base layer, which has left prices above model estimates. The analysts also noted that the overvaluation could be attributed to strong inflows and the excitement surrounding stablecoins and tokenization.

Citigroup analysts also predict that a bull run could push the ETH price above $6,400. They argued that selling pressure amid strong profit booking for Ethereum caused the drop from $4,700 to $4,500.

Citigroup also attributed the growth of ETH to the sustained capital flows into U.S.-based spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) this year. On-chain data shows that ETH ETFs have attracted nearly $14 billion in net inflows to date.

Sosovalue data also shows that ETH spot ETFs recorded a cumulative inflow of $755.22 million in the past week. This month also started with $80 million flowing into Ethereum funds, with September recording roughly $285.74 million in inflows.

Farside data revealed that Bitcoin ETFs have attracted more than $58.4 billion in inflows to date. Bitcoin funds also finished Q3 with $7.8 billion in fresh inflows, accumulating $21.5 billion in 2025 alone.

Ethereum ETFs await SEC approval to include staking provisions

10x Research’s head of research, Markus Thielen, argued that staking approval for U.S.-listed ETH funds could bring huge inflows of institutional money into Ethereum, and possibly outpace Bitcoin ETFs. Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyfatt predicted that staking on Ethereum funds will be approved by at least the fourth quarter of 2025.

Bitwise CEO, Hunter Horsley, told reporters at Token2049 in Singapore on Thursday that Solana’s staking capabilities may give it an advantage over Ethereum in the race for staking ETFs. He noted that ETH’s staking queue recently reached new highs, while Solana’s clears faster.

Horsley believes that the difference is crucial for issuers whose goal is to return assets to investors quickly.

“It’s a huge problem. The ETFs need to be able to return assets in a very short time from. So this is a huge challenge.”

-Hunter Horsley, CEO of Bitwise.

Horsley argued that Ethereum funds can adopt Bitwise’s initiative of using a credit facility to maintain liquidity for redemptions at its Ethereum staking exchange-traded product (ETP) in Europe. He also warned that such facilities come at a cost and have capacity constraints.

Ethereum and Solana funds are awaiting approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to include staking features in the coming weeks. Firms including Bitwise, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, CoinShares, Grayscale Investments, Canary Capital, and VanEck have all filed amended S-1 documents with the agency to update their existing funds’ staking provisions.

On-chain data revealed that Ethereum treasuries control 3.5% of all Ether, while Bitcoin treasuries hold 3.4% of the network’s total supply. Senior research associate at Bitwise, Max Shannon, stated that the percentage of supply accumulated by Ethereum treasuries continues to outpace that of Bitcoin in the short term.

Strategic ETH Reserve shows that 71 firms now hold $22 billion in Ether. Bitcoin Treasuries data revealed that about 184 public firms hold over 1 million Bitcoin worth around $116 billion.

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