#加密市场观察 Why is ETH outperforming BTC’s rise over the past few days?

In recent days, Ethereum (ETH) has clearly outperformed Bitcoin (BTC). Over the past 24 hours, BTC rose 3.8%, while ETH rose 6.1%, nearly double BTC’s increase. This isn’t accidental—it’s the result of short-term catalysts and long-term fundamental tailwinds aligning.

The fuse: inflation data sparks risk appetite
The direct trigger for this move was the US June CPI data coming in below expectations, with a month-over-month decline of 0.4%. The market interpreted this as easing pressure for Fed rate hikes, leading risk assets to get a “release.” In crypto, ETH has long been a high-beta asset—when the market rises it climbs more aggressively, and when it falls it also drops harder. The same macro positive backdrop shows more upside sensitivity in ETH than in BTC, which is the most straightforward reason for the gap in gains this time.

Deeper reasons: ETH fundamentals are genuinely improving
If it were only sentiment-driven, this outperformance would be hard to sustain. But this time, there are several tangible positives behind ETH.
First, Robinhood Chain has officially launched. On July 2, Robinhood rolled out Robinhood Chain, a layer-2 network built on Arbitrum technology and compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, covering 120+ countries. It supports tokenized stock trading and integrates major DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, 1inch, and Morpho. This chain uses ETH as the gas token for settlement, meaning traditional financial giants are bringing real assets and real transaction volumes into the Ethereum ecosystem, rather than staying at the concept level. Currently, about $76 billion worth of ETH is staked to secure the network. The more institutions build businesses on Ethereum’s layer-2s, the higher the value of assets carried by this security system becomes—this is real network effects.
Second, privacy infrastructure is seeing major investment. The Ethereum Foundation has set up a dedicated team called “Privacy Cluster,” bringing together 47 researchers and engineers to fully advance end-to-end infrastructure including private reads/writes, zero-knowledge privacy proofs, and private identity. The core product, the Kohaku wallet framework, is also being iterated continuously. The latest progress has integrated light-client and trusted execution environment technologies into the wallet SDK, enabling users to verify transactions on their own without relying on centralized RPC providers—cutting off third-party tracking of transaction behavior. This direction directly targets one of the shortcomings Ethereum previously had in attracting traditional financial institutions: institutional-grade financial services inherently require transaction confidentiality, rather than exposing every transfer on a public ledger. Industry observers broadly believe 2026 may be the key year for Ethereum’s privacy technology to move into institutional adoption.
Third, institutions are continuing to increase holdings, tightening the supply side. Institutional investors represented by BitMine Immersion bought an additional 325k ETH over the past month; their current holdings are about 5.74 million ETH. They also explicitly stated they aim to secure 5% of Ethereum’s circulating supply. At the same time, US spot Ethereum ETFs ended outflows from June in early July and shifted to sustained net inflows. The marginal change in capital flow direction itself is a positive signal.

How to understand the full logic behind this outperformance
We need to separate the two layers of reasons. The Robinhood Chain, Kohaku privacy upgrades, and institutional buying are medium-to-long-term structural narratives accumulated over the past few weeks or even months. They didn’t directly cause a surge on a single day, but they steadily improved market expectations for ETH fundamentals. Meanwhile, the short-term macro sentiment switch triggered by CPI data is the fuse that ignited this specific magnitude of gains.
You can think of it like this: the tailwinds are the backdrop, macro data is the trigger. When market sentiment turns back up, capital tends to prioritize assets whose “story is getting better.” ETH happens to have both conditions at the same time, so its upside is amplified further.

A reminder: historically, it’s hard for ETH to keep outperforming
It’s worth noting that ETH’s periodic outperformance versus BTC has been seen repeatedly across past cycles, but it has often been hard to sustain. In the third quarter of 2025, the ETH/BTC ratio surged by 53% at one point, then gave back half the gains. The key observation indicator this time is whether the ETH/BTC ratio can effectively break above the resistance level of 0.0286. If it can hold and continue rising, it suggests real fund rotation is supporting this round of outperformance. If it again hits resistance at this level and falls back, it’s more likely just another short-lived technical correction rather than confirmation of a trend reversal.