Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap of about $154.08 billion, was one of the best-performer among other assets in October, with an 18.4% increase despite global economic turmoil.
According to a report released by CryptoCompare, an international cryptocurrency market data provider, in October, “the performance of digital and traditional assets was mixed.”
ETH shows a considerable return, while Bitcoin also performs well – up 5.49%. It prompted experts to believe this month may be another successful month for cryptocurrencies.
Prices for stocks in S&P 500 and NASDAQ rose by 5.26% and 1.56%, which signaled slight stability amongst the global markets. Still, some suffered from negative consequences – namely Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL), whose prices fell by 6.71% and 0.93%, respectively.
Additionally, the report indicates that “Monthly volatility” for most cryptocurrencies recorded a year with low volatility in October. However, ADA and SOL volatility were 61.6% and 57.5%, respectively. ETH’s volatility was about 53.6% more than BTC’s, or 32.2%.
When compared to other types of traditional assets, Bitcoin volatility was much lower. For example, the S&P 500 saw a volatility of around 33.6%, while NASDAQ displayed a volatility of about 39.8%. It gives BTC an edge over traditional assets and indicates a potential long-term shift toward stability in the future.
According to the research report:
As the price of Bitcoin continue to stay rangebound between the key price points $19,000 and $21,000, 30-day volatility has dropped to levels last seen in 2020. On October 22nd, the annualised volatility of Bitcoin hit 26.6%, recording the lowest figure since July 2020.
Ethereum Key Developments In October
Two significant occurrences, in particular, are primarily responsible for Ethereum’s positive returns in October. First, on October 14th, the ETH team announced on Twitter the opening of “Shandong,” a testnet for the upcoming Ethereum upgrade, “Shanghai.”
Second, Google Cloud’s announcement on October 27th that it will begin offering Cloud-Based node services for Ethereum demonstrated the growing interest web2 companies have in digital assets.
Following these announcements, the price of ETH increased by 19.9%, from $1,311 at the start of the month to $1,527 at the end of the month. Volumes have also increased by 20.8%, reaching $3.43 trillion across all exchanges.
The Ethereum network underwent a hard fork called ETHW that retained PoW as its consensus algorithm after the Merge and the successful switch to PoS. Following the main network’s switch to relying only on staking validators, ETHW was anticipated to bring back the relevance of miners.
But, since it began trading on the Merge date, ETHW has had a steep downturn, losing 27.4%. In addition, ETHW volumes have also fallen rapidly throughout October, plummeting 57.8% from a daily average of $93.5 million in September to just 39.4 million in October.
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