Bridged ETH (NEAR Intents) (ETH)

Ethereum is quietly getting stronger while sentiment is still weak.

Exchange supply is at multi-year lows. Staking is at all-time highs. On-chain activity keeps growing. Institutions are building through Ethereum’s ecosystem via L2s, tokenized assets, stablecoins, and settlement rails.

Privacy and zk upgrades could make Ethereum much more useful for real institutions: private balances, private transfers, scalable settlement, and better financial infrastructure without relying on one centralized gatekeeper.

The biggest shift is that $ETH is no longer just a “fee burn” story.

It is becoming reserve collateral for a neutral, programmable financial network.

The market is still focused on price weakness.

But under the surface, Ethereum is becoming more useful, more locked up, and more important to the next phase of crypto finance.

According to Decrypt, the 3-on-3 professional basketball league BIG3, founded by hip‑hop artist Ice Cube, is facing a class-action lawsuit brought by its NFT investors. The plaintiffs allege that in 2022 the league sold Ethereum NFTs for as much as $25,000, promising ownership of teams, participation in management, and a share of future team sales through “deceptive and fraudulent” marketing, but ultimately failed to deliver, resulting in harmed investor rights. The lawsuit points out BIG3 sold four teams in 2024 for roughly $40 million, yet did not distribute proceeds to the NFT holders who were the original investors, demoting them from the so‑called “team owners” to ordinary ticket holders. BIG3 representatives rebut, claiming the plaintiffs violated a contractual obligation to resolve disputes via confidential arbitration, and note that the league is currently planning to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), with an expected valuation of about $290 million. https://t.co/h5MklOMZDf