According to new data from Santiment, Ethereum ($ETH) has gained significant dominance over other cryptocurrencies in terms of the number of active users. The Ethereum network is showing parabolic growth not only in the number of holders; in numerical terms, $ETH currently has 182.74 million nonzero wallets.
For comparison, Bitcoin (BTC) and Tether (USDT) have 58.51 million and 12.96 million, respectively, nonzero wallets. It can therefore be said that Ethereum now has more than 3.12 times as many holders as Bitcoin and 14.1 times more than the most popular stablecoin.
Surge in nonzero wallets widens Ethereum’s lead over Bitcoin
Interestingly, the turning point occurred more than seven years ago, on Feb. 11, 2019, when Ethereum first surpassed Bitcoin in the number of wallets with a balance above zero. Since then, the gap has only continued to widen.
Speaking about other major tokens such as XRP, ADA and Dogecoin, their holder counts are also significantly lower and, compared to the scale of Ethereum and Bitcoin, remain at the lower boundary of the chart.
Why does this matter? The growth in the number of nonempty wallets is considered an important indicator of real network adoption. For Ethereum, this is driven by the development of the decentralized finance ecosystem, tokenization, stablecoins and layer-two networks. All of this requires having $ETH in an account to pay fees and participate in operations.
This structural demand continues to reinforce Ethereum’s position as the primary settlement layer for a wide range of on-chain financial and technological activities globally. As adoption expands, network effects may further accelerate user growth.
