Ethereum, the leading altcoin, has been showing positive signs over the last week after months of bearish consolidations.

Ethereum (ETH) is up 4% in the past 24 hours and is trading around $3,840 at the time of writing. The king altcoin hit a six-month high of $3,900 on the back of Bitcoin’s (BTC) rally above the $100,000 threshold early Thursday.

At this point, Ethereum is 21% away from its all-time high of $4,891 in November 2021.

The second-largest cryptocurrency reached a market cap of $463 billion as its daily trading volume increased by 46% to $63 billion.

What’s driving the ETH rally?

There are many factors driving Ethereum upwards, creating strong buying pressure.

Most notably, the U.S.-based spot ETH exchange-traded funds recorded eight days of consistent inflows. According to data provided by Farside Investors, spot Ethereum ETFs saw a net inflow of $882.3 million since Nov. 22, mostly coming from BlackRock’s ETHA fund.

This brought the total inflows into these investment products to $901.3 million despite a $3.4 billion outflow from Grayscale’s ETHE fund.

Moreover, Ethereum registered an exchange net outflow of $820 million in the last seven days — recording a one-month high outflow of $385 million on Dec. 4 alone — according to data from the analytics platform IntoTheBlock.

The on-chain movement suggests that investors have been accumulating the asset. Considering that 74% of Ethereum holders have held onto their assets for over a year, per ITB data, the leading altcoin could potentially see declining selling pressure.

Data from ITB shows that whale transactions consisting of at least $100,000 worth of ETH reached $73 billion over the last week. 

Growing whale activity usually triggers signs of FOMO (fear of missing out) among retail investors, consequently increasing buying pressure due to greedy market conditions.

Furthermore, Ethereum’s decentralized finance sector has also been growing at a strong pace. Per a crypto.news report Wednesday, Ethereum’s DeFi total value locked reached $72.9 billion as the total TVL touched a 31-month high of $134.7 billion.

Despite the price hike to June highs, Ethereum’s Relative Strength Index is still hovering within the neutral zone, currently sitting at 63. This suggests a maturing accumulation phase for the leading altcoin, following the path of the digital gold.