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The king of altcoins (ETH) prepares for a likely transformative month ahead. As of writing today June 22 ETH is trading at $3,501 with a market cap of $428 billion. The asset has recorded a 1.06% drop in the last 7 days but a slight one of 0.21% in the last 24 hours while its trading volume in the same timeframe stands at $15 billion ranking 3rd.
Recent ETH developments have set the stage for what could be a gain to Ethereum adoption and value. On June 19 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officially ended its investigation into Ethereum deciding not to pursue charges classifying ETH as a security. This regulatory clarity has opened doors for a variety of exciting developments in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Following the decision several major asset managers have revised their Ethereum ETF proposals submitting updates to the SEC on June 21. These updates signal readiness for a July launch with industry giants like VanEck, BlackRock, Grayscale, Invesco Galaxy Digital and Fidelity fine-tuning their offerings.
VanEck has set a competitive benchmark with a 0.20% management fee for its Ethereum fund while Fidelity's updated filing showed a $4.7 million seeding at $38 per share by FMR Capital.
The SEC May approval of a rule change allowing eight major asset managers to list and trade spot Ether ETFs is expected to facilitate the debut of these products on Wall Street exchanges.
In other news the Standard Chartered Bank with $820 billion in assets plans to establish a spot trading desk for buying and selling Bitcoin and Ethereum,
Despite the positive news Ethereum price action suggests caution in the short term. ETH recently broke down from a bullish flag pattern after reaching a high of $3,973 on May 27. This breakdown invalidated the near-term bullish pressure leading to a bearish trend.
The price is now expected to retest the demand zone marked on the chart therefore filling a huge fair value gap left on May 20. This area is likely to act as a strong support level and could potentially trigger a bounce.
The daily Relative Strength Index (RSI) currently sits at 45 indicating that there's still room for further bearish movement before reaching oversold conditions. The Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) is also bearish with the MACD line below the signal line therefore confirming the current bearish market sentiment.
Looking to this onchain metric, Ethereum's network activity has shown a decline in certain metrics over the past few months. The number of active addresses (7-day moving average) has dropped from a peak of 599K on March 25 to around 480K as of today. This decrease in network activity could be interpreted as a reduction in user engagement potentially putting downward pressure on the price.
While Ethereum faces short-term technical headwinds the upcoming launch of ETFs and increased institutional interest could provide significant tailwinds in the medium to long term.
