Crypto spent most of 2026 giving investors reasons to ignore it.
Last week, it gave them billions of reasons to pay attention.
The price of bitcoin surged nearly 25% in its best week in more than three years. Ethereum climbed roughly 30%, while several smaller cryptocurrencies rose even faster.
Now one analyst believes Ethereum could be approaching its “Netflix moment” that could drive ETH to $10,000 by 2029.
That might sound wildly optimistic. But this rally isn’t coming out of nowhere.
And I believe it’s just getting started.
Waking The Sleeping Giant
Since bitcoin hit its record high last October, BTC had fallen roughly 50%, while ETH had been cut by more than half.
Then three things changed at once.
First, the U.S. Treasury doubled the size of its buybacks of long-term government bonds. That helped bring yields lower, weakened the dollar and sent investors looking for assets that could hold their value.
Second, institutional buyers returned in force.
U.S. bitcoin ETFs attracted roughly $1.9 billion last week, while Ethereum ETFs brought in another $697 million.
That’s about $2.6 billion in just five trading days.
And the buying didn’t stop there.
Bitcoin ETFs have now attracted money for eight straight trading days, bringing the total to roughly $2.8 billion.
Ethereum ETFs have also continued pulling in new money.
So this clearly wasn’t just a short squeeze or a burst of enthusiasm confined to hardcore crypto traders.
Wall Street was buying too.
But the third development could matter even more over the long run.
Because Washington is making another push to give the crypto industry rules it can finally build around.
Last Wednesday, President Trump hosted executives from Coinbase, Robinhood, Kraken and other major financial companies at the White House. He urged Congress to pass the CLARITY Act, which would establish clearer rules for digital assets and determine when they should be regulated as securities or commodities.
The bill still faces serious obstacles in the Senate. But it’s no longer a purely Republican effort.
Sen. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, was one of two Democrats who voted with Republicans in May to advance the Senate’s crypto market-structure legislation.
Gallego still wants stronger ethics provisions and a compromise over stablecoin rewards. But the fact that he’s pushing for an agreement tells me there is still a bipartisan path to rules that can survive future elections.
And at this point, the biggest obstacle might not even be party politics.
It might be banks.
Earlier this year, I showed you why banks were fighting stablecoin rewards.
Banks rely on deposits to fund loans and earn interest. If customers move their money into digital dollars that pay higher rewards, banks could lose both deposits and income.
But I believe something even larger is at stake.
Coinbase offers technology that can issue, trade and manage tokenized assets around the clock. Robinhood has introduced nearly 24-hour stock-token trading in Europe with zero commissions. These systems can settle trades almost instantly with fewer middlemen collecting fees.
And I think that’s what really scares the banks.
If tokenized trading moves onto platforms controlled by Coinbase, Robinhood and other crypto companies, traditional financial institutions could lose trading, custody and settlement fees they’ve collected for years.
That’s why JPMorgan, BNY Mellon, Citigroup and others are building tokenization systems of their own. They want this transformation to happen through infrastructure they control.
The CLARITY Act could help determine whether tomorrow’s financial system is controlled by today’s banks or a new generation of digital platforms.
Which brings us back to Ethereum.
Crypto analyst Ted Pillows recently placed Ethereum’s monthly chart beside Netflix’s chart from 2003 through 2011. And the patterns look remarkably similar.
Based on that comparison, he believes ETH could reach $10,000 by 2029.
After all, Netflix spent years building its streaming business before investors understood how large it could become. And Ethereum has spent years becoming the foundation for stablecoins, tokenized funds and decentralized trading while its price lagged behind.
Today, Ethereum and its secondary networks handle more than 60% of the world’s stablecoin supply and a dominant share of tokenized real-world assets.
Ethereum is already becoming infrastructure for a new financial system.
Its price may finally be catching up.
Here’s My Take
Bitcoin and Ethereum still have a long way to go before returning to their previous highs.
And after a rally this fast, we should expect some volatility.
But crypto has passed its first test. Bitcoin and Ethereum have held near their recent highs while billions of dollars continued flowing into crypto ETFs.
Liquidity is improving. Wall Street is buying again. Washington is making another push for clearer rules. And some of the world’s largest financial companies are building a tokenized financial system on blockchain technology.
I believe this could be the beginning of crypto’s next major move.
That’s why I’m going live at 1 p.m. ET on Monday, August 31.
I’ll explain how AI agents could unleash an enormous new wave of demand for crypto, why September 15 could become a massive turning point for the industry and what it could mean for a handful of smaller crypto opportunities that I believe could go stratospheric in the months ahead.
If you missed the biggest gains from crypto’s last bull market, this could be your chance to get ahead of the next one.
So mark your calendar for this coming Monday at 1 p.m. and look for more details in your inbox.
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
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