Ethereum Price: $185.49
Ethereum Price (BTC): 0.020052BTC
Market Cap: $20.12B
ETH Network Dominance*: 69.46%
7 Day Candle**: $182.99 / $193.33 / $177.78 / $185.49

For the first time, the world’s largest stablecoin Tether (USDT) – valued at $4.12 billion – began circulating over 50% of its coins on Ethereum after spending its first four years almost exclusively on the Bitcoin blockchain. Ethereum USDT (USDTe) was introduced at the beginning of 2018 but demand for the currency rapidly escalated in 2019 when its issuance rose from $60 million to in excess of $2 billion in a few short months. Justification for the flip has been largely in the speed and cost of Ethereum-based transactions; today, a simple ETH payment will set the sender back less than one cent and will complete in roughly 15 seconds. On the other hand, Bitcoin payments will carry fees of several cents and transaction confirmations can easily take up to an hour.

This latest “flippening” of the two cryptocurrencies reflects a wider trend in the market, one which those close to Ethereum speculate will culminate in a flip between their respective market capitalizations. At today’s valuations however, such a flip would require the price of Ether to rise nearly ten times (with Bitcoin’s market cap remaining stagnant) – a massive gain, which would seem extraordinarily unlikely to most, particularly after the continuous decline and sideways movements in the price of ETH over the last 2 years.

Yet a price increase that great may not be so hard to reconcile when given context. Week after week the fundamental value being added to Ethereum vastly outstrips that achieved by any other blockchain, including Bitcoin. For years, the Bitcoin-panacea has been – and continues to be – instant and feeless payments on the Lightning Network, a technology which has thus far generated a transaction capacity of $7.6 million.

On the side of Ethereum, there is no singular project or development to focus on. Software is being built on Ethereum that ranges from privacy and identity protocols to web3 browsers like MetaMask and of course decentralized finance, which last week reached an all time high of 2.4 million ETH (roughly 2.2% of the total ETH supply) locked as collateral in systems like Maker. Development on Ethereum crosses all divides, this is not an “indie dev” movement but one which attracts any and all – from solo developers through to multi-billion dollar technology companies and more. Just last week, tech giant Samsung announced their Blockchain Platform SDK, a tool which will help existing applications implement “the blockchain” (read: Ethereum) or new applications to deploy to ETH with minimum complexity and maximum security.

Not only does Ethereum have the largest number of developers, users and (fee-paying) transactions in this space, it also possesses the only clear roadmap towards scaling network capacity. With this understanding of the market, the dismal price of ETH/BTC has very few concrete explanations. Even when standardizing long-term supply caps (Bitcoin’s 21 million to Ethereum’s ~115 million), BTC is valued at a full 10x more than ETH. Given what is happening on Ethereum and the layers above it – on what basis has the market arrived at that valuation? Last week was yet another continuation of the same story: fundamental improvements are still being discounted from the price of Ethereum. Yet as we all know, markets that trade outside of reality can only be sustained for so long.

– Nick, Owner EthereumPrice.org

* calculated as: (ETH Market Cap / Ethereum Network Market Cap)
** open / high / low / close