Ethereum’s $2,750 price vs Grayscale’s ETHE discount

The $2,750 floor

Ethereum trades at $2,750. The network activated the Pectra upgrade on May 7, 2025, which combined the Prague and Electra specification changes. This upgrade focuses on increasing capacity and speed to help Ethereum compete with alternatives. EIP-7691 increased the target blob count to 6 and the maximum to 9 per block to help Layer-2 rollups scale. EIP-7702 allows externally owned accounts to act as smart contracts, which improves gas efficiency. EIP-7251 raises the maximum effective balance for validators from 32 ETH to 2,048 ETH. This allows stakers to consolidate validators and reduces network overhead. EIP-7002 introduces a contract to trigger withdrawals using execution layer credentials. EIP-6110 delivers deposits from execution to the consensus layer. EIP-2537 adds new precompiles for curve operations over BLS12-381 to help developers. EIP-2935 creates a new system contract to serve the last 8192 block hashes as storage slots. EIP-7549 moves the committee index outside the signed attestation to make it easier to verify and aggregate consensus votes. EIP-7844 adds a field to execution layer client configuration to configure the number of blocks for blob counts. EIP-4444 is intended to bump the gas limit to further scale the network. I view this price as a response to these scaling features.

The upgrade changed everything.

Grayscale’s ETHE and the discount

Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) manages $1.9 billion in assets. The fund carries a 2.50% expense ratio. On September 15, 2026, ETHE showed a 0.00% discount to its net asset value. This value moved from a -0.05% discount on August 31, 2026. In July 2024, ETHE saw outflows exceeding $1.5 billion during its first week of trading. I think the 2.50% fee makes ETHE a bad deal for this September rotation. I skip ETHE due to the cost. Around $40 million exited ETHE on August 6, 2026. ETHE outflows hit $1.7 billion since its conversion to an ETF in July 2024. On a Wednesday in August, the nine ETFs collectively saw net inflows of $98 million, but ETHE was a major factor in the mixed trend. The $2.3 billion ETHA is the largest spot Ethereum ETF and jumped 8.4% as of midday Friday. ETHA dropped 43% since its highest price of $30.69. BlackRock’s ETHA received $500 million in cumulative inflows, while Bitwise ETHW received $276 million and Fidelity FETH received $244 million. I find the massive ETHE outflows to be a sign of investor avoidance. The ETHE discount to NAV fell to -6.7% by market close in May 2024.

ETHE outflows were huge.

The $400 million rotation verdict

The $400 million rotation forces a choice between the spot price and Grayscale’s products, specifically between the high-fee ETHE and the lower-cost Mini Trust which provides a much more competitive expense ratio for long-term holders. You should look at the Mini Trust if you want to minimize costs. Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust (ETH) holds $1.02 billion in assets and charges a 0.15% fee. BlackRock iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) holds $8.6 billion and charges 0.25%. The high fee in ETHE makes it the worst option. BlackRock’s ETHB gathered $650 million since its launch and provides a 1.72% net rewards rate. In contrast, the Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust saw $4.9 million in net inflows on a recent Wednesday. I would skip ETHE because the 2.50% fee is much higher than the 0.15% fee of the ETH Mini Trust. I find that the BlackRock iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ETHB) provides a more attractive yield, though it lacks the lower expense ratio of the ETH Mini Trust. The Grayscale Ethereum Mini Trust (ETH) was launched via the distribution of 10% of ETHE’s underlying Ethereum. This seeding helped it become the second largest spot Ethereum ETP. The Mini Trust provides a lower cost path. Which fund will capture the most liquidity as the rotation continues?

I select the Mini Trust.