Bitcoin temporarily dropped below $71,000 after the U.S. Bureau of Labor 
Statistics reported higher-than-expected wholesale inflation, causing 
significant market turbulence. Macro Pressures: PPI vs. Geopolitics Bitcoin 
momentarily slipped below the $71,000 threshold on Wednesday after the U.S. 
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released data showing wholesale inflation 
came in significantly hotter than expected across all […]

From $76K to $71K: Is Bitcoin Losing Its ‘Safe Haven’ Status to Macro Reality?

Ethereum’s price has spent much of the past cycle lagging its own 
institutional and on-chain progress, and Bitwise says the reason is 
straightforward: ETH is still trading primarily as a Bitcoin proxy, not as a 
fundamentally valued network. In a new factor-model analysis, the asset 
manager found BTC has been the dominant force behind weekly ETH returns since 
2018, with macro conditions, network activity and ETP flows playing secondary 
roles. That finding matters because it cuts against one of the more persistent 
narratives around Ethereum. Regulatory clarity has improved, institutional 
access has broadened, and Ethereum still underpins a large share of stablecoin 
and tokenized-asset activity. Yet ETH remains about 62% below its all-time 
high, a disconnect Bitwise set out to explain with a model based on 406 weekly 
observations going back to May 2018. The answer, at least statistically, is 
that Bitcoin overwhelms almost everything else. Bitwise said ETH “moves nearly 
1:1 with BTC on a weekly basis,” with a coefficient of roughly 0.99. BTC alone 
explains around 65% of Ethereum’s return variance, making it the clear core 
driver of price direction. Related Reading: Ethereum Whales Step In: $33M ETH 
Withdrawn From Exchanges In Hours The firm’s broader conclusion is blunt. 
“Adoption fundamentals, such as active addresses, clearly have less impact on 
Ethereum’s price than many assume,” the report said. “Extending this further, 
revenue generation appears even less relevant, as it was removed from the GETS 
model as ‘noise rather than signal.’ Combining both of these conclusions 
supports the idea that since the start of the model in 2018, Ethereum has been 
priced more like a network-driven commodity than a business with durable cash 
flows.” Other Factors Impacting Ethereum Price That framing runs through the 
rest of the report. Financial conditions, measured through the Bloomberg US 
Financial Conditions Index, emerged as the second most important explanatory 
variable. Bitwise assigned the factor a coefficient of about 0.05, with mean 
explanatory power of 11.3%, though that climbed to roughly 40% at peak 
periods. Network activity, proxied by active addresses, had a smaller 
coefficient near 0.03 and average explanatory power of 6%, rising to 30% in 
stronger phases. ETF flows showed a different pattern. Their coefficient was 
only around 0.01, but Bitwise said they were “highly significant,” explaining 
about 10% of ETH variance on average and up to 40% at peak. In other words, 
flows matter consistently, but not with the same force as BTC-led market beta. 
That distinction becomes clearer in different market regimes. Between June and 
August 2025, Bitwise said Ethereum behaved like a levered Bitcoin trade, with 
its BTC coefficient rising to between 1.5 and 1.6 as BTC approached fresh 
highs. Related Reading: Ethereum Futures Volume Outruns Spot 6-to-1 As Macro 
Stress Weighs On Crypto During the post-FTX stress period in the second half 
of 2022, the dynamic became even harsher: “Every factor except BTC carried a 
negative coefficient as returns were explained up to 90% by BTC. In moments 
like these, cash liquidity is what matters. Not fundamentals, flows or macro. 
As such, ETH was essentially anchored to BTC.” There have been exceptions. 
Bitwise identified May 2021 as the period of lowest BTC sensitivity, when 
Bitcoin had already peaked but Ethereum kept rallying as active addresses 
surged during the NFT boom. Still, those idiosyncratic windows appear episodic 
rather than structural. The report also undercuts the case that a richer 
multi-factor framework materially improves short-term forecasting. While the 
model explains historical returns reasonably well, Bitwise said its out-of- 
sample performance failed to beat a much simpler AR(1)+BTC model. Most of the 
predictive value came from Bitcoin exposure and price persistence, while 
additional factors added only limited forecasting power. That leaves Ethereum 
in what Bitwise called a “paradoxical position”: a network with deepening 
institutional relevance, dominant stablecoin and tokenization market share, 
and an increasingly focused roadmap, but a price still driven mostly by 
external beta. At press time, ETH traded at $2,305. Featured image created 
with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Bitwise Found What’s Really Driving Ethereum Price, And It’s Not Fundamentals

Polymarket has acquired DeFi infrastructure startup Brahma, folding its smart- 
account execution layer into a prediction market now eyeing a $20B valuation 
and an AI‑driven, onchain future. Polymarket, the blockchain-based prediction 
market platform currently eyeing a valuation of approximately $20 billion,…

Polymarket acquires DeFi startup Brahma to deepen its onchain stack

A United Kingdom High Court’s recent ruling has clarified the legal status of 
bitcoin, stating that while it is considered property, it cannot be subjected 
to traditional legal claims applicable to physical goods. The $172 Million 
Bitcoin Dispute In a landmark ruling, the High Court of Justice clarified the 
legal status of digital assets, specifically […]

Court Reaffirms Bitcoin’s Status as Property but Limits Tort Claims in $172M Case

Bitcoin’s pre-FOMC sell-off eased as the US Federal Reserve&#8217;s choice to leave 
interest rates unchanged was followed by a swift bounce in BTC price.

Cryptocurrency price in USD