ETH/BTC Ratio Falls To 5-Year Low, Lagging Behind Bitcoin On 85% Of Trading Days

Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has lagged behind Bitcoin on 85% of its buying and selling days. The ETH/BTC ratio, which measures Ether’s worth in opposition to Bitcoin, hit a five-year low of 0.018 on April 9. That is harking back to December 2019, when the ratio was equally low, with ETH priced at $125 and BTC round $7,000.

At the moment, Ethereum is valued at roughly $1,670, as per CoinMarketCap. Whereas Bitcoin additionally skilled a decline—down simply 6% to $75,000, which continues to be over 275% above its peak within the 2017 bull market—it later surged previous $83,000 by day’s finish. In stark distinction, ETH has dipped beneath its 2018 market cycle peak, successfully negating almost seven years of relative good points for Ether and placing most long-term traders at a loss.

Ethereum managed to outperform Bitcoin briefly from mid-2015 to mid-2017 and once more in late 2019 by early 2020. Nonetheless, since then, Bitcoin has been the market chief. James Examine, an analyst at Glassnode, identified that Ethereum has solely outperformed Bitcoin on 15% of its buying and selling days all through its historical past.

Considerations concerning the present state of the Ethereum community have began to emerge. On April 8, Web3 researcher Stacy Muur noticed that the variety of lively Ethereum addresses has remained comparatively fixed over the past 4 years. “I’ve nice affection for Ethereum. Nonetheless, it’s necessary to acknowledge the info: Ethereum has maintained [approximately] the identical variety of lively addresses for the previous 4 years,” she shared on X.

Conversely, some consider that consumer engagement has migrated to Ethereum’s layer-2 options, similar to Arbitrum and Optimism. These networks have seen important development in complete worth locked, indicating that customers are gravitating towards extra reasonably priced and environment friendly choices throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. Knowledge from L2beat helps the notion of heightened adoption of those scaling options.

The common transaction charges on Ethereum have decreased to $0.41, the bottom degree since late August. This marks a drastic decline from the height of $15.21 noticed within the final two years, suggesting decreased congestion within the community.

Nic Carter from Fortress Island Ventures attributed Ethereum’s declining funding enchantment to the rise of layer-2 options and rampant token creation. He talked about that “Grasping Eth L2s” are capturing exercise with out considerably benefiting the bottom layer, criticizing the Ethereum group for allowing the platform to turn into “overwhelmed by its personal tokens.”

Quinn Thompson, founding father of Lekker Capital, remarked that Ethereum is “totally lifeless” as an funding alternative, pointing to diminishing transaction exercise, decreased consumer development, and collapsing community revenues. Carter had beforehand cautioned in September 2024 that Ethereum’s charge income had plummeted by 99% over six months as L2s started to dominate consumer and income flows.