Ethereum price stayed up on Thursday, gaining 2.5% to trade at $3,204 at the time of writing. Despite its resurgence, Ethereum has struggled in the ETF market in the last two days. According to Coinglass, Ethereum spot ETFs recorded net outflows worth a total of $141 million in the last two sessions. That signals an underlying weak momentum.
In addition, Ethereum price has been struggling below key moving average levels. The coin trades below its 20 and 50 Simple Moving Average (SMA) levels on the daily chart. In addition, it is below the Volume Weighted Moving Average (VWMA), which is at $3,257 as of this writing.
The Case for Ethereum Price Upside
Impressively, Ethereum chain has seen its DeFi performance return to the upside in recent days. DeFiLlama data shows that its Total Value Locked grew by 1.87% in the last 24 hours and stood at $64.43 billion. Elsewhere, open interest also bumped up in the last 24 hours, with perpetual rising by 3.15% to $14.9 billion. This signals a rising demand for ETH coins.
Meanwhile, Ethereum price has recently formed a falling wedge pattern on the daily chart. The falling wedge is a bullish pattern that is formed during a downtrend. It typically signals the weakening of a downtrend. In ETHUSD‘s confirmation breakout above $3,270 will signal a likely continuation of the upward trajectory. Extrapolating the wedge’s height from that level suggests that ETH price could rise to $4,028 in the coming days.
Institutional affinity is a key growth area for ETH price. World Liberty Financial (WLF), an investment firm backed by US President Donald Trump has been acquiring the coin in large troves, and currently has $195 worth of ETH in its portfolio. Notably, that constitutes about 50% of its total crypto holdings.
WLF is not only backed by Trump, but also a significant number of influential investors, including Tron Founder, Justin Sun, who has invested $75 million in the company. In some ways, the DeFi-focused investment vehicle is drawing comparisons to MicroStrategy.