As the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to combat stubbornly high inflation, cryptocurrency prices continued to fall in the first half of the year, with bitcoin, Ether, and other tokens down more than 50%. Over the past week, following weaker-than-expected U.S. inflation data that could pave the way for a less aggressive tightening by the Fed, risky assets such as the Nasdaq 100 have rallied, helping fuel gains in cryptocurrencies, which have been closely correlated with stock market indicators for months.

"In addition to the increased volume of derivatives, we speculate that crypto native investors may start to take on more risk," Farrell said. He pointed to an increase in the balance of packaged bitcoins, which can be used as collateral in Ethereum's decentralized finance, with stablecoin speeds rising last week, suggesting more activity on the blockchain.

Genesis Global Trading strategists Noelle Acheson and Willis Croft believe that "Ethereum is currently being driven by new fundamentals (post-merger tokenomics), speculative factors (ETH PoW fork), and overall macro sentiment." "While Ethereum price gains have been muted over the past few days, actual volatility has risen substantially since the lows at the start of the year, both reflecting growing investor interest and reminding the broader investment community that the crypto market story is never far away."