Fidelity Digital Assets released a 'Q2 2023 Signals Report' on July 18, which claimed that Ether’s (ETH) outlook for the next 12 months and the long term is positive. Year-to-date, Ether price has gained 62% but while the investment firm might be 'short-term' bullish on Ether, that does not mean they believe that the month-long bullish channel will be sustained.

While institutional investors like Fidelity Digital Assets may have a bullish longer-term vision of ETH price, let’s compare their analysis against network and market data to see if they’re on the money.

Ether/USD 1-day price index. Source: TradingView

Beyond the technical indicators, the rationale behind Fidelity’s report bullish outlook for Ether is the networks’ higher burn rate versus coin issuance, the “new address momentum” and a growth in the number of network validators.

Fidelity “Q2 2023 Signals Report”, July 18. Source: Fidelity Digital Assets

According to the Fidelity report, the net issuance since The Merge in September 2022 resulted in a net supply decrease of more than 700,000 Ether. Additionally, the analysts claim that Glassnode’s increasing Ethereum addresses that transacted for the first time ever proves a healthy network adoption.

The report also points to a 15% increase in the number of active Ethereum validators in the second quarter.