ETH Surges 11% This Month, Outperforming BTC on Institutional Demand

As Asia begins its Thursday business day, ETH is trading at $2,770, marking an 11% increase this month, outperforming BTC, which rose 5%. This surge in ETH's value can be attributed to institutional trading demand, as sophisticated investors increasingly bet on ETH’s structural growth and role as a gateway between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi).

According to OKX Chief Commercial Officer Lennix Lai, Ethereum is overshadowing BTC on the perpetual futures market, with ETH accounting for 45.2% of trading volume over the past week, compared to BTC's 38.1%. This trend is similar to what is occurring on Derebit. Despite this, institutions continue to show interest in BTC, with long-term holders (LTHs) realizing significant profits during recent rallies. Glassnode analysts noted that this dynamic highlights maturation and accumulation pressures outweighing distribution behavior, which is atypical for late-stage bull markets.

Both ETH and BTC remain susceptible to geopolitical risks and black swan events, but institutional conviction remains intact. ETH is emerging as the vehicle of choice for accessing regulated DeFi, while BTC continues to benefit from long-term accumulation by institutions via ETFs. According to the analyst's forecast, macro uncertainties remain, but $3,000 ETH looks increasingly likely.

The stablecoin market has hit an all-time high of $228 billion, up 17% year-to-date. This surge in dollar-pegged liquidity is driven by renewed investor confidence, rising DeFi yields, and improving regulatory clarity. The total value of ERC20 stablecoins on centralized exchanges has climbed to a record $50 billion, with most of this growth attributed to the increase in USDC reserves on exchanges. Tron leads the pack in benefiting from this influx, with its blend of fast finality and deep integrations with stablecoin issuers like Tether making it a liquidity magnet. Presto Research noted that Tron notched over $6 billion in net stablecoin inflows in May, topping all other chains and posting the second-highest number of daily active users behind Solana. By contrast, Ethereum and Solana experienced significant stablecoin outflows and bridge volume losses, indicating a lack of new yield opportunities or major protocol upgrades.

The next generation of AI agents will increasingly handle tasks end-to-end, but they are currently trapped in silos and need crypto to get them out. Blockchains, with their open, composable architectures, offer a “forwards-compatible” way to build interoperable agent economies. Early projects like Halliday are building protocol-level standards for cross-agent workflows, while firms like Catena and Skyfire are using crypto to enable autonomous agents to pay each other without human intervention. Coinbase has also stepped in to support infrastructure efforts here. If these rails take hold, blockchains won’t just be financial infrastructure; they’ll be the back-end of an open AI economy, where agents transact, coordinate, and enforce user intent transparently.

Gaming maintains its lead as the dominant category in the distributed app (dAPP) ecosystem, even as its market share continues to slip. The latest data shows gaming’s dominance fell for the second consecutive month, from 21% in April to 19.4% in May. Daily user activity remains relatively stable, but the sharp decline in investment paints a more troubling picture. Venture funding for gaming projects plummeted to just $9 million in May, down sharply from over $220 million monthly at the end of 2024. Analysts point to a fundamental flaw driving this exodus: a lack of engaging gameplay. Projects frequently prioritized tokenomics, speculative NFT launches, and marketing blitzes, often sidelining critical gameplay testing and development. Without fun and replayable mechanics at their core, even heavily funded Web3 games have struggled to maintain player interest, suggesting that the industry's biggest challenge might simply be learning how to build great games.