Exchange-traded funds based on spot Ether have been changing hands for only six weeks, but already the continued adoption of the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency is raising interesting questions about the future of Ethereum.

Investors can now buy and sell exposure to Ether the same way they do for stocks through the ETFs. While that’s an important step, analysts and industry executives said they see it as transitional until conservative investors like pensions and insurance companies can buy Ether directly, which in many cases isn’t allowed under fund rules. Then there’s the question of whether the ETFs based on Bitcoin and Ether will diverge – so far, they tend to trade in lockstep even though each protocol is very different. And perhaps looming largest for investors is the question of what a developed Ethereum ecosystem will look like, as no application has broken through to everyday users. Still, the ETF marks a big step in Ethereum’s development.

“This is a really important milestone, mainly because a lot of pension funds and other institutional investors are restricted from buying Ether through a cryptocurrency account,” Paul Brody, global blockchain lead for consultancy EY, said in an interview. “This provides a tremendous amount of access.” Unlike many cryptocurrencies, Ether can be valued using a discounted cash flow model, which should help more traditional investors feel comfortable, Brody said.

Read more: Ethereum ETFs ‘Open Up the Floodgates’ and Signify Strong Push For Mainstream Blockchain Adoption

Ether ETFs began trading in late July. The stats for how much capital has gone in to the new funds is complicated by how the firm Grayscale converted its previous Ether trust into an ETF. It held over $9 billion of Ether in the trust, which had a structure that made it hard to sell. It also charges a 2.5 percent management fee on its Ether ETF, compared with 0.2 percent to 0.25 percent for competitors BlackRock, Fidelity and others. Those two factors have led to massive selling from holders of the Grayscale ETF ($2.6 billion so far, according to Farside Investors.)

Stripping Grayscale from the inflows, the other Ether ETFs have pulled in about $2 billion since July 23, with BlackRock leading that with $1 billion, according to Farside.

“In the long run, we may look back upon this as a somewhat temporary, transitional capability because I certainly expect over time that it will be legal, allowable and within the rules for most investment organizations to buy Ether and crypto and digital assets directly,” Brody said.

Bitcoin ETFs, which began trading in January, have far outstripped Ether so far, pulling in about $37 billion, excluding the Grayscale outflows.

“Given the overall awareness for Bitcoin is much higher than for other digital assets it makes sense that there would be significantly less hype for an Ethereum ETF,” Bill Barhydt, the chief executive officer of digital asset services and wealth management firm Abra, said in an interview. “However, there is no denying the success of these new ETFs. Blackrock even had higher inflows recently for its ETHA Ethereum ETF versus its IBIT Bitcoin ETF.”

EY’s Brody hopes that within six to 12 months investors will discern the differences between the Bitcoin ETF and its Ether cousin. He draws the distinction as Bitcoin is “a crypto asset” that doesn’t create its own return, like gold, and is used as an inflation hedge. Ethereum, on the other hand, is a global computing platform.

“Ethereum’s revenue depends on transaction fees,” he said. “As the platform has become more efficient, and Layer 2 networks have taken off” that efficiency has led to a drop in revenue “even as the ecosystem has become vastly more successful.”

Unlike a stock, for example, like Apple that can see huge gains in its share price as it grows its market and increases sales, it’s not a given that such gains will translate to a higher Ether price if Ethereum keeps growing, Brody said.

“There’s no guarantee that a world dominated by Ethereum is necessarily one where the value of Ether is somehow gargantuan,” he said. “The Internet dominates all communications for the world, and it’s free.”

Like so much else about Ethereum, it’s crypto-economics is complicated.

Ether ETF inflows drop

Take for instance the recent drop-off in inflows to Ether ETFs in recent days. Abra’s Barhydt said the decrease isn’t a surprise to him.  

“The initial excitement has been offset by outflows from the Grayscale Ethereum ETF, which was expected, given that those assets have been locked for quite some time,” he said. Another tool investors can use to value Ether is the rate at which it’s created and destroyed, which fluctuates with time. But again, as with most things related to Ethereum, it’s complicated.

“Whether Ethereum’s total supply increases or decreases over time depends on the balance between new issuance and the amount of Ethereum burned,” Barhydt added. “If network activity is high and burns are significant, it’s possible for Ethereum to become deflationary, where the total supply actually decreases. If network activity is relatively low and burns are lower than the Ethereum, the supply can be inflationary.” 

One of the biggest unknowns is what a mature Ethereum ecosystem will look like. While there are certain decentralized finance protocols that are popular among the crypto savvy, no Ethereum-backed app has hit the mainstream. A crucial step will be to get Ethereum to scale so that it can handle billions of transactions per day, up from about 1.1 million per day now, Brody said.

“Ethereum is becoming the foundation of a global, digital smart-contract economy,” he said. “The Internet is valuable, but what turned out to be way more valuable was all the companies that were created on the Internet.” Ethereum applications are being developed beyond finance “and it will take time but eventually there will be some kind of Ethereum industrial index that you can buy that will be like the S&P 500 index fund.”

Brody pointed out the time it took institutional investors to switch from investing in bonds only to buying stocks – which happened between the 1960s and the 1980s. The same shift to crypto, led at this stage by ETFs, is underway but will take a similar amount of time to fully penetrate, he said.

“Major changes in investor behavior take decades,” he said.