Ethereum has been one of the most volatile assets on the crypto market recently in terms of its yield.
Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas believes that betting on the fall of ETH is the most effective strategy for 2025. Two exchange-traded fund (ETF) are available to short the digital assets with leverage.
Ethereum becoming more affordable
Bloomberg Intelligence has ranked two ETFs that offer an alternative to Ethereum shorting with a 2-fold leverage in first and second place. Balchunas tweeted this information.
This is an interesting quote by Cointelegraph.
The best ETFs of this year include two exchange traded funds: ETHD, and ETQ. Since the start of the year, their returns have been 247.3% for ETHD and 219.19% for ETQ.
Balchunas says that investors who continue to believe in Ethereum’s rise will face “tough consequences” for their bets on its price. The price has dropped by 52% from the start of 2025, and 35% in the last six months. Buying ETH in the last year was not the best investment.
The ETFs track Ethereum’s price inversely, with a doubled volatility compared to its base asset. Exchange-traded fund do not necessarily accurately reflect the behaviour of the assets they are based upon.
Ethereum is still the leading blockchain with $46 billion in total value locked (TVL). The long-term yield for ETH started to decrease as early as march 2024. Dencun was implemented in order to lower user costs. However, it also reduced the revenue generated by transaction fees for validators.
The Validator Network revenues are low due to the difficulty in monetizing L2 solutions which handle an increasing percentage of Eth transactions.
Analysts estimate that, for example, during the final week of March the network only earned 3.18 ETH from the L2 blockchains Arbitrum & Base.
In order to restore the commission revenue to pre-Dencun level, it would be necessary to double transaction volume on L2 Blockchains by 22,000. Michael Nadeau is the founder of The DeFi Report.
In the first quarter 2025, smart contract platforms such as Ethereum and Solana have seen a decline in their activity. The drop in indicators is a reflection of the cooling investor sentiment after the massive tariffs introduced by U.S. president Donald Trump.
Uses of Bitcoin in everyday life
Bitcoin is a valuable tool for the real-world because of its widespread adoption. The Lomond School in Scotland, for example will accept Bitcoin as payment of tuition starting with the 2025 fall semester. This was the first UK school to adopt this method.
In order to incorporate the Austrian School of Economics’ principles of “healthy Money” into the curriculum, the adoption of crypto currency is part of this plan. According to representatives of the school, this will prepare students for an uncertain world.
Bitcoin makes it easier for anyone to understand, and is more inclusive. This includes people living in countries where traditional banking services are not available. Lomond believes Bitcoin is a great real-life case study for economics, computing science, innovation, and ethics.
The school will not accept any other cryptocurrency and convert BTC immediately into normal currency. In the future it could create its own cryptocurrency reserves, but the success of this will be determined by the outcome of the test.
Sources claim that Bitcoin is already part of several school and university curricula. Some have implemented strategies to form national cryptocurrency reserves in order to safeguard assets against inflation and its impact on buying power. In 2022, for example, the University of Cincinnati will add cryptocurrency classes to its course curriculum in order to help students learn how to use Bitcoin and Web3 technologies.
In 2023, the Mi Primer Bitcoin Program was implemented in El Salvador’s education system. Remember that in September of 2021, the government legalized BTC as a payment option.
The University of Wyoming established the Bitcoin Research Institute in July 2024 to carry out peer-reviewed cryptocurrency research. The University of Austin’s endowment fund announced in February 2025 that it had allocated $5,000,000 to BTC. This fund has assets in excess of $200 million.
Bottom line
Interest in real-world applications of cryptocurrency continues to increase despite Ethereum’s declining value and the increasing popularity of ETFs that short the digital asset. Initiatives from educational institutions that bet on Bitcoin as an instrument for the future confirm this. The development of cryptocurrency will continue.
