Betting in opposition to Ether has been the proper performing alternate traded fund (ETF) method so far in 2025, in accordance with Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas.

Two ETFs designed to take two-times leveraged temporary positions in Ether claimed (ETH) first and second place in a Bloomberg Intelligence score of the yr’s top-performing funds, Balchunas said in a put up on the X platform.  

In the year-to-date, ProShares UltraShort Ether ETF (ETHD) and T Rex 2X Inverse Ether Daily Target ETF (ETQ) are up roughly 247% and 219%, respectively, Bloomberg Intelligence info confirmed. 

The implications for Ether are “brutal,” Balchunas said. Ether itself is down roughly 54% year-to-date on April 11, according to Cointelegraph’s market data.

Both ETFs use financial derivatives to inversely monitor Ether’s effectivity with twice as lots volatility as a result of the underlying cryptocurrency. Leveraged ETFs do not always utterly monitor their underlying property. 

Related: Ethereum fees poised for rebound amid L2, blob uptick

Weak revenue effectivity

With roughly $46 billion in entire value locked (TVL), Ethereum continues to be the popular blockchain neighborhood, in accordance with data from DefiLlama. 

However, its native token effectivity has sputtered since March 2024, when Ethereum’s Dencun enhance — designed to cut costs for patrons — slashed the neighborhood’s cost revenues by roughly 95%.

The enhance saved the neighborhood’s revenues depressed, largely resulting from difficulties monetizing its layer-2 (L2) scaling chains, which host an increasingly more large portion of transactions settled on Ethereum. 

“Ethereum’s future will revolve around how effectively it serves as a data availability engine for L2s,” arndxt, creator of the Threading on the Edge publication, said in a March X put up.

In the week ending March 30, Ethereum earned solely 3.18 ETH from transactions on its layer-2 chains, equal to Arbitrum and Base, in accordance with data from Etherscan. 

To completely get properly Ethereum’s peak cost revenues from sooner than the Dencun enhance, L2’s transaction volumes would want to lengthen larger than 22,000-fold, in accordance with an X post by Michael Nadeau, founding father of The DeFi Report. 

Meanwhile, smart contract platforms — along with Ethereum and Solana — suffered across-the-board declines in utilization in the midst of the primary quarter of 2025, asset supervisor VanEck said in an April report. 

The diminished train shows cooling market sentiment as retailers brace for US President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs and a looming commerce wrestle.

Magazine: XRP win leaves Ripple and industry with no crypto legal precedent set

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