At a time when experts are counting down the days for Ether spot ETFs, Matt Hougan, a director at Bitwise, a major asset management firm, said he expects the ETFs to attract $15 billion in investments in the first 18 months.

He wrote 2 different scenarios: “It should actually be 25”

Hougan said that although he expects Ethereum spot ETFs to attract $15 billion in the first 18 months after they open for trading in the US market, the figure should actually be $25 billion. In a note to Bitwise clients, Hougan said he arrived at this figure by comparing the market capitalizations of the two largest cryptocurrencies:

“Based on market capitalization, I think Bitcoin spot ETFs will have a weight of 75% and Ethereum spot ETFs will have a weight of 25%. According to this distribution, it turns out that Ethereum spot ETFs should attract $ 25 billion in 18 months. However, the carry trade effect and $10 billion of the Grayscale fund coming into the market will reduce this figure. My expectation is around 15 billion dollars.”

“Carry trade” is known as an arbitrage mostly practiced by institutional firms. Institutions try to make a profit on the difference by “carrying” funds in spot and futures markets. Hougan informed that the carry trade value in Bitcoin spot ETFs is approximately 10 billion dollars.

“Staking will not have a huge impact”

While many analysts say it would be a big loss for funds not to have staking, Hougan disagrees:

“Staking revenues will cause a loss that will not affect the bottom line. It will not be very important for inflows to the funds.”

As a result, Hougan said the figure should actually be $25 billion, but he thinks it will be $15 billion.