Which institutions are buying and selling $ETH spot ETFs in the fourth quarter of 2025? Is ETH about to crash?

I saw the data on the $BTC spot ETF for the fourth quarter of 2025 a few days ago. Now looking at this structure for $ETH, I must say it is indeed quite distressing, with hedge funds and brokerages selling nearly 40% of their positions, leading to a net reduction of nearly 450,000 ETH across all institutions in a single quarter.

The only thing that makes me feel there is still some fighting chance is that investment advisors haven't sold much, only about 8% of the total, which is significantly lower. This means that the funds actually holding positions have not collectively fled for now; the current situation looks more like traders are retreating while long-term investors are holding on.

Therefore, I prefer to interpret this phenomenon as ETH spot ETFs currently being in a structurally unstable phase, rather than a simple phase where all investors are selling.

Because a large part of the hedge fund positions were never long-term believers; they were involved in strategy trading focused on arbitrage and hedging. Also, brokerages often reflect changes in positions related to trading and market making, and are more oriented towards liquidity tools.

Among the large holders, only investment advisors are allocating for client accounts, and the low reduction by investment advisors indicates that most "client" investors do not react strongly to short-term prices, even when ETH has already been halved; this segment of clients still opts not to exit excessively and remains the most leveraged part.

Now the question arises, why is the structure of ETH so much weaker than BTC?

My personal understanding is that BTC is a "store of value narrative," while ETH resembles a "tech stock narrative."

The rationale for buying BTC's ETF is simpler and more suitable to include in asset allocation sheets. In contrast, ETH's ETF is more easily treated as a trading tool by many institutions, so when:

1. The arbitrage space shrinks, volatility weakens, and capital costs rise, hedge funds will exit.

2. The ETF itself cannot directly convert staking rewards into product cash flow (you read that right, it indeed has not been achieved yet), then the long-term holding attractiveness will weaken.

3. When risk appetite decreases, the market will preferentially embrace the more singular story and stronger consensus of BTC.

Thus, I believe that ETH spot ETFs are currently still trading-driven, and long-term holders have not been able to form a stronger consensus. In this structure, the data will look very bleak, because fast money is retreating frantically while long-term investments and older money have not entered in large amounts.

Therefore, I focus more on the following three signals for ETH's upcoming trend:

1. Whether investment advisors will start significant net outflows for consecutive multiple quarters.

2. Whether holding companies and foundations will continue to absorb.

3. Whether significant net outflows will continue in the new quarter.

But to be honest, $ETH is indeed quite difficult at the moment, while Bitcoin's situation is comparatively much better.

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