ETH recovers to $3,000 as institutional investors pile into Ethereum futures

Ethereum’s native token, ETH, rallied on Sept. 26 after falling sharply earlier in the week, hitting a low of $2,651 on Coinbase.

Ethereum was up 3.63% against the US Dollar to hit an intraday high of $3,030. The upside move took ETH/USD up 14.3% from a low of $2,651, indicating traders are still trying to maintain a bullish bias despite possible resistance ahead.

Last week, the price of Ethereum fell due to a series of problems in China. Traders dumped crypto assets on Monday after turmoil in China's debt-laden real estate market sparked a sell-off in global equities.

There was a late bounce, but another sell-off on Friday after the People's Bank of China reiterated that trading in cryptocurrencies is illegal. Nonetheless, Ethereum bulls found their footing and pushed the price back above $3,000, which is a psychological resistance level.

ETH/USD daily price chart Source: TradingView.com

The story was similar for some of the top crypto assets, with bitcoin hitting an intraday high of $43,767 on Coinbase after rising 2.49%. Meanwhile, UNI, the native asset of the Uniswap exchange, also rose more than 19%, making it the best-performing crypto asset in at least the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, Ethereum’s main competitors, ADA and SOL, underperformed, with ADA/USD down more than 5% and SOL/USD down more than 3% in 24 hours.

Institutional needs

Ethereum’s gains also came after a bullish report from JPMorgan. Research by JPMorgan noted that institutional investors have begun to increase their exposure to the Ethereum market.

Analysts at JPMorgan believe that the continued enthusiasm in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) fields is the main driver of investor interest in Ethereum. The 21-day average premium of ether futures over ether spot prices climbed to 1%, they added, based on data recorded by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) since August.

Ethereum futures daily price chart Source: TradingView.com

According to data provided by CryptoQuant, JPMorgan’s report comes as a record amount of ETH has been withdrawn from all cryptocurrency exchanges. As of writing, the net ETH reserves on the exchange have fallen to 18.44 million ETH from 23.94 million ETH a year ago.

Independent analyst PostyXBT also expects a further price rally in the Ethereum market, noting that Ethereum's latest decline has pushed it into a classic accumulation zone, as shown in the chart below.

Weekly ETH/USD price chart showing its latest accumulation range Source: PostXBT, TradingView.com

“The close of the week is equally important for ETH as the price tested the previous range high as support,” the analyst noted.

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