During early trading on May 27, the price of Ether (ETH) is edging closer to the $4,000 mark, experiencing a 5% increase over the past 24 hours. This surge has sparked hope among investors that it could mark the beginning of a post-ETF approval pump for Ether.
According to data from Cointelegraph, the asset saw a nearly 5% gain in a single day, reaching an intra-day high of $3,930. Notably, this price was previously touched just a few days ago when spot Ether ETFs were first approved on May 23.
As a result, ETH has seen a 27.5% gain over the past week, outperforming Bitcoin (BTC), which only experienced a 3.8% increase in the same timeframe.
On May 27, analyst Matthew Hyland shared with his 143,000 followers on X that ETH has confirmed a bullish divergence and a break of the downtrend, accompanied by an increase in volume. This further validates the breakout and has contributed to the significant weekly move.
The notable upward movement of Ether has sparked numerous predictions from industry analysts and observers. Arthur Cheong, the founder of DeFiance Capital, predicted in a May 26 post on X that ETH would reach $4,500 even before spot ETFs are launched. To gauge the sentiment of his followers, Cheong conducted a poll on May 25, which revealed that nearly half of the 5,800 respondents had between zero and 25% of their portfolios allocated to ETH. This prompted Cheong to comment on the underallocation of ETH in the crypto market.
Meanwhile, Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano made a prediction that within the next six to twelve months, Michael Saylor, the founder of MicroStrategy, would buy ETH.
Drawing comparisons to Bitcoin, which experienced a surge of over 70% to reach an all-time high in the two months following the approval of spot BTC ETFs in the United States, it is speculated that Ether could follow a similar trajectory. If this were to happen, prices could reach an all-time high of around $6,000 by the end of July.
The significant movement in the price of Ether has also had ripple effects on the crypto ecosystem. The total value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) has returned to its highest level in two years, reaching $117 billion, with 60% of that value locked on the Ethereum network, according to DefiLlama. Additionally, Ethereum layer-2 networks are approaching a collective all-time high in total value locked, currently standing at around $47 billion, according to L2beat.