In recent times, the price of Ethereum (ETHUSDT) has been stuck in a consolidation phase between $2.4k and $2.7k, a trend that has persisted since the early parts of May 2025. Despite its significant fully diluted value of around $304 billion, this leading altcoin has been unable to leverage the increasing interest from institutional investors.
As previously reported by Coinpedia, there has been a consistent cash inflow into U.S. spot Ether ETFs for the past three months, with BlackRock’s ETHA leading the surge. Remarkably, these ETFs have seen a net cash inflow exceeding $1.4 billion in the last two months alone.
This influx has inversely affected the supply of Ether on centralized exchanges, which has been on a steady decline over the same period, currently standing at about 14.77 million coins.
Despite the apparent accumulation by institutional investors, Ethereum’s price has continued to stagnate over the last two months. In the past week, ETH price has fallen by over 8 percent, trading at around $2,529 during the late North American session on Wednesday.
The key factor hindering Ether price growth in the face of increased institutional demand is the saturated futures short position, primarily driven by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME). Hedge funds and other institutional entities have heavily placed short bets via the CME futures, a figure which currently stands at over $1 billion.
Consequently, these short bets have outweighed the demand from spot Ether ETFs, leading to a significant suppression of the ETH price.
