Ether delivered its best month in a year in July, gaining roughly 18–20% depending on the data source, while bitcoin rose about 7%. Crypto decoupled from broader equity weakness and recovered a large part of June's losses.
What drove ETH
- ETF demand: U.S. spot ether ETFs saw net inflows on most trading days.
- Institutional push: a new independent nonprofit, Ethereum Institutional, launched on July 1 to serve institutional clients.
- DeFi activity: DEX-sector market cap rose about 40% and RWA about 18%; RWA was the clearest broad-based winner of the month.
ETH traded back near $1,970 on July 27, though it remains well below its levels from a year earlier.
Stabilization, not euphoria
July was the clearest stabilization since April, but not a full return to risk-on:
- Futures volume fell to about $4 trillion, its lowest in two years.
- Spot volume on centralized exchanges dropped about 30% to $705 billion.
- Open interest declined across perps, futures and options, and ETH funding briefly turned negative.
- Crypto VC funding totalled $1.36 billion across 41 rounds.
