Having watched the crypto market for so many years, I recently noticed an interesting phenomenon.

Do you still believe in the traditional financial management methods? The US dollar has been depreciating, and the returns on government bonds are fluctuating wildly; just leaving your money there is like a slow bleed. I know a CFO of a sci-tech innovation board company, and at the beginning of the year, they were still wary of ETH. What about now? The board has directly decided to invest idle funds into it. Why? Half-year returns are more impressive than those of traditional financial management over ten years.

This is not an isolated case. More than 70 leading asset management institutions have crowded in, with a capital scale of 25 billion USD. What signal does this send? Institutions have lost patience with traditional investment products. Crypto assets like ETH are becoming core options in their asset allocation.

Why are institutions being so aggressive?

Don't think it's just about the 4.2% staking yield. Do the math and you'll understand: in addition to stable staking returns, they can also play arbitrage through the premium difference of ETFs. After two rounds of operations in a year, the excess returns are quite substantial. This combination is something traditional financial products simply cannot provide.

More importantly, liquidity is key. After staking ETH, it can still be maneuvered through derivatives, and funds will not be locked up. For institutions, this means they can benefit from long-term appreciation while retaining flexibility for short-term adjustments.

So the current question is not whether ETH is worth allocating, but how to allocate and how much. On-chain data shows that the average holding period for institutions has extended to over 18 months, indicating that this batch of funds is not for short-term speculation.

As for whether ETH can outperform BTC in the long run? My view is: BTC is digital gold, and ETH is financial infrastructure. They are two different tracks, and there's no need to compare them forcefully. But if you ask which one has more imaginative potential, I would say that ETH's application scenarios and narrative flexibility are greater.

The market is changing, and money is looking for new places to go. Institutions are re-betting, what are retail investors still waiting for?