While Bitcoin has struggled since the much-anticipated spot ETFs have gone live, Ethereum has emerged as a winner in the sector.
Ethereum Has Done Better Against Both Bitcoin And Altcoins Recently
In its latest weekly report, the on-chain analytics firm Glassnode has discussed how Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the altcoins have performed against each other recently.
The cryptocurrency sector as a whole has enjoyed a net rise since BlackRock first filed for its exchange-traded fund (ETF) last year.
The trend in the market caps of the three asset classes over the past few months | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 4, 2024
This period was filled with speculation about whether the various spot ETFs would go through. Still, starting mid-October, the assets rose as confidence that approval would be achieved went up.
“Bitcoin’s market cap has increased by +68.8% since BlackRock first filed for their ETF, and the aggregate Altcoin Market Cap followed suit, rising by +68.9%,” reads the report. “However, Ethereum has seen more sluggish relative momentum, underperforming the wider altcoin space by -17%.”
Next, Glassnode has talked about the “market cap dominance” of these asset classes, which measures the percentage share they occupy in the total valuation of the cryptocurrency sector.
The trend in the market cap dominances of these assets over the last few years | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 4, 2024
Since the FTX collapse in November 2022, Bitcoin’s market cap dominance has notably risen. However, BTC hasn’t taken a share of Ethereum as the second-largest coin’s dominance has moved mostly sideways in this period. Instead, the altcoins and stablecoins are the ones who have lost dominance to Bitcoin.
The BTC spot ETFs finally gained approval earlier this month, but the event turned out to be a sell-the-news one for the asset. In this post-ETF era, though, a new narrative has appeared in the sector in the form of the ETH spot ETFs.
“Shortly after the approval of the Bitcoin ETF, several issuers have filed or suggested a willingness to advocate for a spot ETF for Ethereum,” notes Glassnode. “Although obtaining approval for an ETH-based ETF might be more challenging due to the SEC possibly considering Ether as more of an investment contract, the markets appeared to express optimism.”
As the chart below shows, Ethereum’s dominance against Bitcoin has gone up.
The value of the metric seems to have gone up for ETH recently | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 4, 2024
As the graph shows, ETH’s market cap dominance versus BTC has increased by about 2.9% since the latter’s spot ETFs gained approval from the US SEC.
The altcoin side of the sector has seen a net rise in this period as well, but the alts haven’t been able to keep up with ETH, as the latter has generally outperformed them.
ETH has gained market-share against the altcoins | Source: Glassnode's The Week Onchain - Week 4, 2024
In total, Ethereum has earned 4.2% in global dominance. “This makes ETH the biggest winner in the post-ETF approval market movements,” explains the analytics firm.
ETH Price
At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading at around $2,230, up 1% in the last 24 hours.
ETH has plunged over the last couple of days | Source: ETHUSD on TradingView
Featured image from Bastian Riccardi on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, Glassnode.com
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