Ethereum Smashes $3K Barrier – Altcoin Season Fever Grips Crypto Markets
Ethereum's surge past $3,000 sends shockwaves through the crypto ecosystem, reigniting altseason speculation. Traders pile into high-beta plays as ETH dominance wavers—just as the 'smart money' starts rotating profits into vintage Bordeaux and private islands.
The FOMO is real
Small-cap tokens rally 20-50% in ETH's slipstream, flipping the usual 'up only' script. Memecoins—those bastions of financial rigor—lead the charge with double-digit pumps.
Liquidity tsunami incoming?
DeFi APYs spike as yield farmers chase the next 100x. Never mind that most protocols still hemorrhage real revenue—when lambo dreams are on the line, who needs fundamentals?
As one hedge fund PM quipped: 'We trade the narrative, not the balance sheet.' And right now, the narrative screams ALTSEASON—until the next -40% drawdown, anyway.
Sharplink stock outperforms ETH since the first acquisition
Even more interesting is how Sharplink (SBET) has been performing relative to ETH since the company adopted the ETH treasury. According to CryptoQuant, SBET is up 486% since Sharplink first invested in ETH. By comparison, ETH has only been 17% since then.
Interestingly, this is not unique to Sharplink and ETH. Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy) stock MSTR has performed relatively better than Bitcoin. According to Yahoo Finance data, BTC is up only 24.75% this year while MSTR is up 44.86%.
Unsurprisingly, the company stock is trading at a premium to the ETH it holds. With a market cap of $1.55 billion, the value of ETH backing each SBET stock based on its current ETH holdings is only 0.00353 ETH, worth around $10.40 at current prices. This is far below the $21.5 share value.
However, the recent gains of Sharplink stock are a welcome development given that the shares are still trading far below their peak. SBET peaked in May at $124 and has fallen significantly since then, with its registration of shares filing a few months ago even part of the factors contributing to that decline.
Meanwhile, the company is now the largest holder of ETH after its latest purchase, which took it above the Ethereum Foundation holdings of 242,489 ETH.
ETH hitting $3k ignites alt season sentiments
The $3,000 mark represents a significant price level for Ethereum, both psychologically and financially. According to Santiment, 124.13 million of the total 155.04 million ETH in existence are at a higher price at this level than when they first originated. This means that 4 out of every 5 ETH tokens are in profit above $3,000.
Meanwhile, many believe the altcoin season might be on the way, noting the sustained ETH performance over the past few weeks that has allowed the token to wipe off most of its losses this year.
There were further signs of interest with ETH futures flipping that of BTC a few days ago, according to Glassnode data, with a 24-hour volume of $62.1 billion compared to the $61.7 billion. The drop in Bitcoin dominance from 66% to 64.5% has also contributed to this sentiment.
ETH exchange-traded funds have also started attracting massive volume, with $1.10 billion in net inflows into the products in July. The month is now on track to become the second-best month for ETH ETFs since its launch in 2024 and is already third, only a few hundred million behind June 2025, which had $1.16 billion, and over a billion behind December 2024 with $2.08 billion.
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