Bitcoin is now worth $1 trillion more than Ethereum

Bitcoin has taken its biggest price lead in recent history over the altcoin ecosystem, leaving Ethereum, its perennial No. 2, in the dust.

Crypto OG’s market cap is now more than a trillion dollars higher than the second-ranked one, which has hit its lowest price relative to its senior since early 2021.

Bitcoin’s Trillion Dollar Lead

According to CoinGecko, Bitcoin traded at $68,180 on Thursday, with a market capitalization of $1.34 trillion. Ethereum, on the other hand, was trading at $2530, with a market capitalization of $305 billion.

This leaves the ETH/BTC ratio at just 0.037, a low seen in April 2021 following Ethereum’s meteoric rise over the previous 12 months. During the previous bull market, Ethereum followed the same general price behavior of the other major altcoins: when Bitcoin pumped, Ethereum rallied.

Not the case this time. Since Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge update in September 2022, the main smart contract platform has lost more than 50% of its value against BTC, despite the entire crypto market recovering in dollars since then .

Over the past couple of years, several of crypto’s most bullish catalysts have centered on Bitcoin. In March 2023, Bitcoin’s reputation as “digital gold” encouraged investors to flood into it when several US banks collapsed. Later, Bitcoin rallied for several months on the enthusiasm of spot approvals of the Bitcoin ETF, and again in 2024 after the monumental success of the ETF.

During that time, Bitcoin’s dominance has rebounded to multi-year highs, with the asset now worth 59% of the entire crypto market, according to TradingView.

Lackluster performance of Ethereum

Unlike Bitcoin ETFs, which have absorbed more than $20 billion in net inflows since launch, Ethereum spot ETFs that went live in July have still experienced net negative inflows since then, at due to the losses of the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE).

According to CryptoQuant, declines in the Coinbase Premium Index suggest that institutional investors may be reducing their exposure to ETH.

However, Ethereum bulls online remain defiant, in the face of underperformance. Ethereum educator Anthony Sassal argued on Wednesday that Ethereum L2s are dismantling any existing FUD around Ethereum being a slow and expensive network, and the current bones of the network are mere “carriages”.

“The only thing ETH lacks right now is confidence, but that can change overnight,” Bankless podcast host Ryan Sean Adams added on Wednesday.

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