Ethereum has been closing in on its recent all-time high mark and could keep climbing past it to a fresh record of $5,000 or more, if institution demand and progress towards its Fusaka upgrade continues to be encouraging, an analyst said.

“Ethereum’s path toward $5,000 will depend on a confluence of sustained institutional demand, upgrade-driven scalability, and supportive macro conditions,” Javier Rodriguez-Alarcón, chief investment officer at digital asset investment firm XBTO, told Decrypt. “Spot ETH ETFs have seen robust inflows, over $1.3 billion in the past week alone, signaling renewed conviction from institutional allocators.”

“On-chain metrics and whale accumulation patterns indicate that ETH may be entering an expansion phase reminiscent of Bitcoin’s 2020 breakout,” he added.

Ethereum ETFs have already gotten off to a strong start for the week, pulling in $176.6 million during Monday’s trading session, according to data from Farside Investors. Last week, Ethereum funds around the world pulled in $1.48 billion, per a report from CoinShares, marking a substantial comeback after being in the red the week prior.

Ethereum got incredibly close to topping $5,000 in late August, when it set a new all-time high of $4,946.05. Ethereum is currently changing hands for $4,560 after having gained more than 10% since last week. That puts it 7.6% away from its all-time high price. Earlier Thursday, ETH rose as high as $4,753, per CoinGecko.

Users on Myriad are growing more confident that the upward trend will continue for Ethereum. As of Tuesday morning, 80% of users think ETH will see $5,000 sooner than it could dip to $3,500. That’s a marked uptick in optimism from last week, when users were evenly split on which price Ethereum would see next.

Rodriguez-Alarcón, who used to work at BlackRock and JPMorgan, added that risk assets in general have benefited greatly from the monetary policy signals coming from the U.S. Federal Reserve, which next meets at the end of the month to decide on interest rates.

“On the macro front, a dovish Fed tilt, ongoing pressure on fiat currencies, and positive momentum in gold could unlock additional flows into risk assets,” he said. “In that environment, Ethereum stands to benefit disproportionately given its foundational role across DeFi, stablecoins, and tokenization infrastructure.”

That macroeconomic environment has led to one of the biggest stock rallies in 15 years as investors rush back into emerging markets.

“The dollar’s weakness has acted as the spark, but this rally is also about the maturity of emerging markets themselves,” wrote deVere CEO Nigel Green in a note shared with Decrypt. He noted that Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa are all drawing renewed interest from foreign investors.

Meanwhile, Ethereum developers are working towards the Fusaka upgrade, which has been called the biggest scaling bet yet for the network. The project’s roadmap says it is planned to arrive before the end of the year.

“The upcoming Fusaka upgrade, expected in November, introduces key improvements such as parallel execution in the Ethereum Virtual Machine, a major step toward alleviating scaling bottlenecks in the next growth cycle,” Rodriguez-Alarcón said.