Bitcoin BTC stayed steady above $109,500 in Asian morning hours Wednesday, a rebound that started after last week’s profit-taking.

However, all eyes are on ether ETH with traders commenting on upside volatility in the weeks to come and reporting record volumes for certain ETH-based products on some exchanges. ETH zoomed 5% in the past 24 hours, leading gains among majors.

“Investors are finally recognizing the compelling investment opportunity that Ethereum presents. It’s still trading well below its all-time highs, while bitcoin is already near its ATH levels,” said Jeff Mei, COO at BTSE, in a message to CoinDesk.

He pointed to Ethereum’s growing role in tokenizing real-world assets like stocks, money-market funds, and U.S. Treasuries, adding that it was “very likely that Ethereum will reach and/or surpass its all-time high price by the end of the year.”

Ether ETFs have attracted more than $800 million in the past two weeks alone, outpacing bitcoin’s sub-$400 million, according to SoSoValue data. That’s helped the spread between ether’s implied volatility and bitcoin’s reach its highest level since late 2022 — a sign traders expect bigger price swings ahead.

Open interest in ether perpetuals on Kraken hit an all-time high of 30,000 ETH this week, said Alexia Theodorou, Head of Derivatives at Kraken, in an email to CoinDesk.

“This signals a notable uptick in speculative activity around the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap,” she noted. However, she cautioned that the market “has yet to form a clear directional consensus,” with the long/short ratio still well below January levels.

Elsewhere in the market, Solana SOL and Cardano ADA posted gains of 4.7% and 3.3%, respectively, adding to the risk-on tone, while XRP XRP rose 2% to $2.30. Ethereum beta bet dogecoin DOGE climbed 3.7% to reverse all of last week’s losses.

Traders are closely watching upcoming U.S. CPI data on Wednesday, which could sway Federal Reserve rate expectations and shape risk sentiment ahead of next week’s meeting.

OpenTrade has raised $7 million in a strategic round led by Notion Capital and Mercury Fund, with backing from a16z crypto, AlbionVC, and CMCC Global. The latest funding brings the London-based company’s total haul to $11 million in just six months, a signal of investor confidence in the startup’s push to bring yield-bearing stablecoins to users in unstable economies.

The company runs a “yield-as-a-service” platform designed for fintech apps, exchanges, and neobanks. Clients like Criptan in Spain and Littio in Colombia use OpenTrade’s backend to let users earn interest — up to 9% — on USD and EUR holdings.

In countries like Argentina or Colombia, where dollar bank accounts are rare and offer negligible interest, apps powered by OpenTrade let users earn meaningful returns straight from their phones. In Colombia, for instance, banks offer less than 0.4% APR on dollars. Littio users can get up to 6%.

OpenTrade manages $47 million in assets and has processed close to $200 million in volume, growing 20% month over month. The capital injection will help the company scale operations and improve its tech stack.

«OpenTrade is building core financial infrastructure for the next generation of fintech,» said Mercury Fund’s Samantha Lewis. Notion Capital’s Itxaso del Palacio added that stablecoins’ $240 billion market cap makes OpenTrade’s infrastructure a needed foundation for the sector.

Decentralized Layer 1 blockchain XRP Ledger’s (XRPL) sidechain that’s compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) is set to go live in the second quarter, Jaazi Cooper, director of product management at Ripple, and David Schwartz, Ripple’s chief technology officer said at the ongoing APEX 2025 conference in Singapore.

EVM compatibility refers to the ability of the blockchain to run Ethereum-based decentralized applications and smart contracts seamlessly.

The XRPL EVM sidechain testnet went live early this year and is experiencing rapid growth, according to Peersyst Technologies.

«87 new entities – with no prior XRP involvement – are now contributing to the ecosystem: infrastructure, apps, and demand generation,» Peersyst said on X. «When mainnet goes live, all of it becomes part of the XRP ecosystem – possibly the biggest onboarding in XRP history.»

The EVM sidechain will allow users to potentially generate yield through DeFi applications, such as liquidity pools, and smart contract interactions.