Original Title: "Ethereum's Decade of Turbulence: A Review of Major Events, Who is Buying? Can it Reach $4000?"
Original Author: Deng Tong, Jinse Finance
On July 30, 2025, Ethereum will celebrate its tenth anniversary. Over the past decade, what major events have marked Ethereum's development? In the current bullish market for Ethereum, who is buying? What new narratives surround Ethereum? Can it break the $4000 barrier?
I. Major Events in Ethereum's Decade Journey
In 2013, Vitalik Buterin conceived Ethereum. In 2014, he, along with Gavin Wood, Charles Hoskinson, Anthony Di Iorio, and Joseph Lubin, began the development of Ethereum and conducted crowdfunding, leading to Ethereum's official launch on July 30, 2015. Now, as Ethereum approaches its tenth birthday, let us review the significant events in its development history and reflect on the highlights of Ethereum's journey.
In 2013, Vitalik Buterin published the Ethereum white paper. In the white paper, Vitalik acknowledged the birth of Bitcoin in 2009 as a significant breakthrough by Satoshi Nakamoto. However, what Vitalik truly aimed to expand was the underlying blockchain technology, using it as a tool for distributed consensus.
From July 22 to September 2, 2014, Ethereum began its sale, allowing people to purchase Ethereum using Bitcoin. In the announcement of Ethereum's release, the discount was set at 2,000 ETH per BTC, linearly decreasing to 1,337 ETH per BTC over 42 days. This meant the issuance price of ETH was $0.29 per ETH. However, when ETH first traded on August 7, 2015, its trading price was $2.77.
On July 30, 2015, the first version of Ethereum, Frontier, officially launched, marking the official start of the Ethereum mainnet. The Ethereum network transitioned from theory to practice, allowing developers to mine Ethereum and begin developing dApps and various tools, taking a crucial first step in the development of the Ethereum ecosystem.
On March 14, 2016, the Homestead hard fork was officially launched. This fork marked Ethereum's transition from an experimental phase to a more stable official version, laying an important foundation for subsequent development.
On July 20, 2016, Ethereum experienced its first major hack, the DAO attack, which led to the DAO fork. This attack stemmed from an insecure contract, resulting in hackers stealing 3.6 million ETH. The DAO fork was conducted through a voting system by the Ethereum community, where any ETH holder could vote via the voting platform. Ultimately, 85% of voters agreed to the fork. However, some miners refused to fork, leading to the birth of Ethereum Classic (ETC).
On October 18, 2016, the Tangerine Whistle hard fork was initiated, aimed at addressing urgent network health issues faced by the Ethereum network.
On October 16, 2017, the Byzantium hard fork was officially launched. It was the first hard fork in Ethereum's "Metropolis" development phase, containing 9 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at improving Ethereum's operational efficiency, privacy, and security, while also reducing the block reward from 5 ETH to 3 ETH and delaying the "difficulty bomb."
On February 28, 2019, the Constantinople hard fork was implemented. The Constantinople hard fork aimed to enhance Ethereum's operational efficiency and design more optimized solutions for smart contracts and decentralized applications.
On December 9, 2019, the Istanbul hard fork was executed. This upgrade improved Ethereum's defenses against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that had occurred years prior. The hard fork also enabled interoperability between Ethereum and Zcash, allowing contracts to have more innovative features.
On January 2, 2020, the "Muir Glacier" hard fork was implemented, postponing the "difficulty bomb" by 4 million new blocks, approximately 611 days, to allow more time for Ethereum's transition to a proof-of-stake mechanism.
On December 1, 2020, the Beacon Chain began producing blocks. The Beacon Chain is a core component of Ethereum 2.0, representing a new proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain.
On April 15, 2021, the Berlin upgrade was executed. This hard fork optimized gas fees for certain operations on the EVM and increased support for various transaction types.
On August 5, 2021, the London hard fork introduced EIP 1559, which implemented a base fee system, a tip mechanism, and a feature allowing users to specify a maximum fee. If there is a difference between the maximum fee, base fee, and miner tip, users will receive a refund in Ethereum.
The Altair fork on October 27, 2021, was the first upgrade to the Beacon Chain. The two main upgrades of the Altair fork included the introduction of an "inactive + penalty" mechanism and support for light clients. The "inactive + penalty" reduced rewards for inactive stakers on the network, while support for light clients allowed validators to access the blockchain without needing to maintain a continuous connection.
On December 9, 2021, the Arrow Glacier upgrade was launched, aiming to postpone the Ethereum network's "difficulty bomb" to June 2022.
On June 30, 2022, the "Gray Glacier" upgrade postponed the difficulty bomb by 3 months.
On September 15, 2022, the Ethereum merge upgrade was completed, marking a significant event in Ethereum's transition from a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. This upgrade merged the Ethereum mainnet with the Beacon Chain, representing a milestone in blockchain development history.
In June 2022, the Gray Glacier upgrade was implemented. This upgrade further delayed the difficulty bomb, allowing more time for Ethereum's complete transition to a proof-of-stake mechanism, ensuring that network mining difficulty would not excessively increase due to the difficulty bomb, maintaining stable network operation.
In March 2024, the Dencun upgrade was introduced. This upgrade brought data blobs for layer two scaling, helping to improve the performance of Ethereum's layer two solutions, enhancing network scalability, and laying the groundwork for reducing transaction costs and increasing transaction processing speed.
On May 24, 2024, the SEC officially approved the 19b-4 form for Ethereum spot ETFs, involving several institutions including BlackRock, Invesco, and Fidelity. The 19b-4 form is primarily used for rule change applications proposed by exchanges, marking a key step for the listing of Ethereum spot ETFs. On July 23, 2024, the SEC officially approved the S-1 filing for the ETF, allowing Ethereum spot ETFs to be listed. The S-1 filing is the final step before a fund officially begins its sale and trading, and this approval signifies that Ethereum spot ETFs can officially enter the market for trading.
On May 7, 2025, the Pectra upgrade was activated. It introduced 11 Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) aimed at enhancing staking, scalability, and user experience on the Ethereum network.
II. Who is Buying ETH Recently?
1. Whales
On July 21, James Wynn closed his ETH (25x leverage) and PEPE (10x leverage) long positions, making a profit of $538,500.
On July 20, a whale withdrew 103 WBTC ($12.22 million) from Binance and exchanged 70 WBTC for 2,214 ETH ($8.26 million) on-chain, with an exchange rate of 0.0316.
On July 20, a top trader on the Hyperliquid platform, The White Whale, made nearly $30 million in profit in just one week. Over the past week, he went long on ETH and SOL through 4 wallets, locking in nearly $30 million in profits, maintaining the top spot on the leaderboard.
On July 20, a hacker who stole over $300 million from Coinbase users purchased 649.62 ETH ($2.31 million) at a price of $3,561 just 9 hours later.
On July 20, two newly created "whale" or institutional wallets purchased 58,268 ETH, worth approximately $21.2 million, through FalconX and Galaxy Digital.
On July 19, "whales/institutions hoarding ETH through FalconX" continued to accumulate 19,550 ETH (approximately $7.07 million). Since July 12, this address has continuously hoarded 122,000 ETH (approximately $435 million) through FalconX, with an average price of about $3,213.
2. Institutions
On July 18, Nasdaq-listed Bit Digital (stock code: BTBT) announced that it would use the net proceeds from a recent $67.3 million private placement to purchase approximately 19,683 ETH. After this transaction, Bit Digital's total Ethereum holdings reached approximately 120,306 ETH.
On July 18, the Trump family's crypto project WLFI spent 3 million USDC to increase its holdings by 861 ETH.
On July 18, Nasdaq-listed Thumzup Media Corporation announced that its board had approved the authorization for the company to invest $250 million in cryptocurrencies, with the current planned investments including BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, DOGE, LTC, and USDC, aiming to diversify its cryptocurrency portfolio.
On July 18, SharpLink increased its holdings by 18,712 ETH, bringing its total to 326,074 ETH, valued at $1.14 billion.
On July 17, BlackRock purchased an additional 158,875 ETH, valued at approximately $574 million. This brought the total ETH purchased by the institution over two days to 363,445 ETH, with a total value of $1.31 billion. Currently, BlackRock's total ETH holdings have reached 2.46 million ETH, valued at approximately $8.9 billion.
On July 17, GameSquare Holdings announced plans to issue 46,666,667 shares of common stock to raise $70 million, with the company planning to use these funds to enhance its ETH holdings.
III. What are the New Narratives Surrounding ETH?
1. Treasury Corporations
An increasing number of companies are hoarding cryptocurrencies, following the strategy of transforming into crypto treasury corporations.
On May 27, 2025, sports betting operator SharpLink Gaming, Inc. (Nasdaq: SBET) announced the signing of a securities purchase agreement for a $425 million public company private investment (PIPE), planning to issue approximately 69.1 million shares of common stock (or equivalent securities) at a price of $6.15 per share (with company management team members at $6.72 per share). SharpLink will use the raised funds to purchase Ethereum (ETH) as the company's primary treasury reserve asset. After the transaction is completed, Ethereum co-founder and Consensys founder and CEO Joseph Lubin will serve as the chairman of SharpLink's board and assist the company in developing its core business as a strategic advisor. From this point on, SharpLink officially becomes an Ethereum treasury corporation, dubbed the "ETH version of MicroStrategy."
2. Ethereum ETF
Since the U.S. SEC officially approved Ethereum spot ETFs in July 2024, products represented by BlackRock (ETHA), Fidelity (FETH), and Grayscale (ETHE) have quickly become favorites among investors. BlackRock's ETHA leads with $21 billion in assets under management (AUM), with daily net inflows exceeding $120 million for a single product. This scale of growth not only reflects traditional institutions' recognition of ETH but also marks ETH's gradual transition from a "high-risk crypto asset" to a "mainstream investment target."
The popularity of Ethereum ETFs has significantly changed the holding structure of ETH—institutional holdings increased from 12% in 2024 to 27% in 2025, while the proportion of exchange circulation dropped from 31% to 18%, reaching a new low since 2018. This trend of "de-exchanging" has reduced short-term selling pressure, causing ETH's price volatility (30-day annualized) to decrease from 65% to 42%, bringing it closer to traditional assets (such as gold's volatility of about 15%), further attracting risk-averse capital into the market. ETH is integrating into the traditional financial system.
3. Sovereign Wealth Funds
On June 4, Consensys CEO and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin revealed that the company is in talks with a sovereign wealth fund and bank from a "major country" about the possibility of building infrastructure in the Ethereum ecosystem. Lubin predicts that Ethereum will enter a decentralized supercycle and may become the core of a new global financial system.
Vitalik Buterin stated that the capabilities of the Ethereum blockchain will increase tenfold within the next year. Lubin described Ethereum as the "gold standard of trust" and believes its value may ultimately surpass that of Bitcoin.
4. Reserve Asset of the New Digital Dollar Economy
The development of dollar stablecoins has created unprecedented opportunities for Ethereum. Stablecoins provide a channel for individuals worldwide to access dollars—growing 60 times since 2020, exceeding $200 billion—millions of new dollar holders need more than just digital cash. They require yields, investment opportunities, and financial services. Due to regulatory and infrastructure limitations, traditional finance cannot serve this vast new market.
IV. Will ETH Break the $4000 Barrier? Is Altcoin Season Coming?
Ethereum's strong price movement has become one of the highlights of the cryptocurrency market in July. Kobeissi pointed out: "Since July 1, Ethereum's market cap has increased by $150 billion, while net short positions reached an all-time high just days ago."
ETH/USD 3-hour chart. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X
"Additionally, many shorts have used leverage, which further increases the pressure. Ethereum may soon reach $4,000." If Ethereum rises another 10%, an additional $1 billion in short positions will be liquidated.
ETH exchange liquidation heatmap as of July 18. Source: The Kobeissi Letter/X
On July 20, LD Capital founder Yi Lihua stated: "ETH broke $3700; the weakness of the past few years has made everyone forget the bull markets of 2017 and 2020. ETH has far outperformed BTC, and this round we insist that ETH will continue to outperform BTC, which has already been validated. In a bull market, do not short; at least hold ETH, and you won't miss this round of market."
QCP Capital's market weekly report released on July 21 stated: Multiple altcoin season indicators have broken 50, reaching the highest level since December last year. Coupled with the open interest of ETH perpetual contracts jumping from $18 billion to $28 billion in a week, it marks that the altcoin season may have officially begun. QCP pointed out that the dominant players in this cycle are institutional investors, benefiting from the clarity brought by the GENIUS Act regarding stablecoin regulations, as corporate finances begin to accumulate ETH, SOL, XRP, and ADA, similar to BTC's role in the fiscal allocations of Strategy and Metaplanet.
If ETH receives SEC approval for its staking spot ETF in the coming months, it may attract funds from BTC ETFs to ETH, further releasing yield potential. In fact, last week, the daily net inflow of ETH spot ETFs exceeded that of BTC for two consecutive days, indicating a surge in institutional interest in ETH, with BlackRock also confident in its staking ETH ETF.
Additionally, the bullish spread trading in the ETH options market is active, with significant positions being established for call spreads expiring in September and December, highlighting market optimism for the fourth quarter. Currently, BTC's market dominance has fallen from 64% to 60%, while ETH's market share has risen from 9.7% to 11.6%. If this trend continues, a new round of altcoin season may have already begun. QCP stated it will continue to monitor relevant signals and update developments promptly.
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