July 24 (Reuters) - The nine exchange-traded funds

(ETFs) tied to the spot price of ether, the world's

second-largest cryptocurrency, scooped up net inflows of $106

million on Tuesday as they began trading on U.S. stock

exchanges, according to data from CF Benchmarks and several

trading firms.

The funds that pulled in most of those assets were sponsored

by the same firms that emerged as the biggest winners following

January's debut of spot bitcoin ETFs, CF Benchmarks, a digital

asset index provider, noted.

BlackRock's ( BLK ) iShares Ethereum Trust ETF, led

the pack with $266.5 million in inflows, closely followed by

Bitwise Ethereum ETF, which had inflows of $204

million. The Fidelity Ethereum Fund attracted $71

million in assets.

The Grayscale Ethereum Trust ( ETHE ), which converted into

an ETF from a publicly traded trust on Tuesday, launched with

more than $9 billion in assets and a fee well above the range of

0.20% to 0.25% of 2.5%. It saw outflows of $484 million,

according to CF Benchmarks and traders. That figure is well

above the first-day outflows from Grayscale's converted bitcoin

ETF in January, which totaled only $95.1 million in spite of the

larger size of that bitcoin ETF.

In a note published after the market's close Tuesday, crypto

market-making firm Wintermute Trading noted that investors

appear to be rotating out of the Grayscale ETF in favor of

other, less costly offerings.

A newly launched lower-cost ETF, the Grayscale Ethereum

Mini Trust, which levies a fee of only 0.15%, may have

picked up some of those assets. It saw inflows of $15.1 million

on Tuesday.

"The real money interest was strong enough to deem the

launch a marginal success," noted Wintermute in its analysis of

the initial trading volume of and flows into the new ETFs.