Ethereum has always been eyed as the biggest competitor for Bitcoin, the world’s first and biggest cryptocurrency. In a recent statement, the co-head of market neutral at BlockTower Capital, a crypto and blockchain investment firm, Rahul Rai, claimed that Ether (ETH) will dethrone Bitcoin (BTC) in the years to come in terms of market capitalization.
Ethereum hit its all-time high above $4,700 on Nov. 8th while Bitcoin breached $65k on the same day. It seems that the entire market acquired a bullish stance as the ETH market cap shot up by nearly 4%, resting at $558 billion. In contrast, Bitcoin is still dominating the market with a market cap of $1.2 trillion.
Comparatively, two years ago, Bitcoin ruled over 67% of the crypto space while Ethereum dominance was just 8%. While Bitcoin’s dominance dropped, ETH dominance nearly tripled in these two years.
Ethereum vs. Bitcoin: the war wages on
Although currently, Bitcoin still dominates over 43% of the crypto space, the 24-year old hedge fund founder said in his statement to Insider that by the end of this cycle, i.e., in six months or so, Ethereum will take over the market and dominate Bitcoin.
“Bitcoin is a store of value, it’s digital gold. And so its market cap, at most, is going to be somewhere around gold – may be larger, because it has some properties that are better than gold. But that’s roughly the benchmark you’re going to use to cap its market size,” commented Rai in his statement.
Rahul Rai in his statement
Ethereum has obtained a special place in the crypto space. With a number of decentralized applications currently operating on the network, the use cases of the Network are diverse and never-ending. While Rai claims that Bitcoin is a better store of value, Ethereum actually represents the decentralized space.
The total locked value for ETH has currently reached $100 billion, continuing its upward trajectory. The anticipated reveal of ETH 2.0 which will shift it from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake has also made investors bullish on the price action for ETH in the near future.
Furthermore, the NFT industry that exploded this year found a safe haven in the Ethereum blockchain. A number of NFTs have been released on the network as it continues to be the top destination for NFT creators.