GENIUS Act is helping Ethereum ‘have its moment,’ Bernstein says

Coinciding with U.S. President Donald Trump's signing of the bipartisan-supported Genius Act last week, the price of Ethereum's native coin has seen a substantial increase. Over the past seven days, the price of ETH has increased by about 25%.

Analysts at Bernstein suggested that ETH will "continue seeing strong investment interest," citing, in a note shared with The Block, the potential for increased focus from financial markets on stablecoins and tokenized assets. They also expect the influence of BlackRock and other asset managers to drive ETH allocation in institutional portfolios, while banks and fintechs purchase operational ETH to cover transaction fees on Ethereum.

Various market commentators and analysts are attributing ETH's run to a broad demand for Ethereum yield and the new rise of — following in Strategy's footsteps on the Bitcoin front — Ethereum treasury companies. Ethereum exchange-traded funds are also gaining momentum, having historically underperformed compared to Bitcoin ETFs. Last week, spot Ethereum ETFs saw a record daily net inflow of $726.74 million on Wednesday.

"The GENIUS Act was signed by the U.S. President on Friday. Stablecoins are now legal digital cash. And given stablecoin’s dominant rail, Ethereum is having its moment finally - ETH is up ~45% in the last 2 weeks," analysts at Bernstein said.

"This is not a crypto cycle of the boom-bust kind," the Bernstein analysts added. "This is a blockchain financial services cycle."

Ether rose 3.29% in the past 24 hours to trade at $3,790 at the time of writing, while bitcoin gained 1.15% to change hands at $119,424, according to The Block's price page .

Last week, President Trump signed the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins, or GENIUS Act. "We take a giant step to cement American dominance of global finance and crypto technology as we sign the landmark GENIUS Act into law," Trump said at the signing ceremony.

The GENIUS bill would establish a federal regulatory framework for stablecoins, requiring them to be fully backed by U.S. dollars or other highly liquid assets. It would also mandate annual audits for issuers with a market capitalization exceeding $50 billion and establish rules for issuance by foreign entities. 

Meanwhile, Ethereum's recent price gain has boosted activity in its non-fungible token ecosystem, pushing trading volume for NFTs to its highest level since mid-January. The global NFT market cap has risen to $6.04 billion , a 16.9% increase in the past 24 hours, and has reached its highest level since early February, according to CoinGecko data .