Ether outpaces bitcoin on fresh institutional inflows and rising demand for tokenization, signaling a potential push towards its all-time high. ETH zoomed 5% in the past 24 hours, leading gains among majors. Ether ETFs have attracted more than $800 million in the past two weeks alone, outpacing bitcoin’s sub-$400 million, according to SoSoValue data. That’s helped the spread between ether’s implied volatility and bitcoin’s reach its highest level since late 2022 — a sign traders expect bigger price swings ahead. “Investors are finally recognizing the compelling investment opportunity that Ethereum presents. It’s still trading well below its all-time highs, while bitcoin is already near its ATH levels,” said Jeff Mei, COO at BTSE. He pointed to Ethereum’s growing role in tokenizing real-world assets like stocks, money-market funds, and U.S. Treasuries, adding that it was “very likely that Ethereum will reach and/or surpass its all-time high price by the end of the year.” Open interest in ether perpetuals on Kraken hit an all-time high of 30,000 ETH this week, said Alexia Theodorou, Head of Derivatives at Kraken. “This signals a notable uptick in speculative activity around the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap,” she noted. However, she cautioned that the market “has yet to form a clear directional consensus,” with the long/short ratio still well below January levels.