Ethereum Can't Keep Up With Bitcoin Or Solana: What's Going On?

Even after Ethereum’s celebrated arrival on Wall Street, the price of ETH has failed to keep in step with rival cryptocurrencies this cycle.

As the crypto market nosedived on Sunday, the ETH-to-BTC conversion ratio tapped a yearly low of 0.041, according to TradingView. Although digital assets—including ETH—have posted a solid recovery since then, the ratio remains at 0.043 at writing time.

Many can’t help but find the trend unusual. In bull market years, altcoins have frequently outperformed Bitcoin as capital spills over from the leading digital asset into riskier small-cap assets. In fact, this proved true during Bitcoin’s first-quarter rally for altcoins like Solana, and meme coins like PEPE and WIF. Just not ETH.

“This shift challenges the long-held belief that network effects alone would maintain Ethereum’s dominance,” wrote financial analyst Wesley Kress to Twitter on Tuesday. “Ethereum is trading horrible this cycle and I think people are realizing it’s not the future.”

Several other analysts think such pessimistic takes are grossly exaggerated, however. Time will be Ethereum’s best friend, they say, especially as the new Ethereum spot ETFs are given time to sink in.

“There was too much hype about the potential for what this ETF would immediately do for the price—now, there's too much FUD,” said crypto influencer Crypto Kaleo on Thursday. He noted that the Ethereum ETFs have been live for twelve days, which is the exact length of time it took before BTC bottomed and rebounded after its respective ETF debut in January.

Theoretically, the introduction of ETFs is bullish news for the price of ETH price since it enables various institutions to buy Ethereum where they may otherwise have been barred from doing so by regulation.

According to FarsideUK CIO Jonathan Bier, however, ETFs likely won’t bring Ethereum the same magnitude of success as they did Bitcoin.

“Much of the success will be driven by people and entities shifting their existing [Ethereum Trust] holdings into ETFs,” Bier told Decrypt. He said that Grayscale’s Ethereum unwind may be more severe than its Bitcoin unwind, since investors have capital gains taxes to worry about by selling their Ethereum Trust shares.

“At the same time Ethereum investors are less loyal than Bitcoin investors,” he added. “Ethereum investors are always looking for the latest thing with the newest tech.”

Throughout the year, Solana has overtaken Ethereum on key metrics related to network activity. In late July, Solana surpassed Ethereum for total transaction fees for the first time ever.

Several market-related on-chain metrics also show dithering investor interest in ETH next to BTC. According to CryptoQuant, Bitcoin’s “realized capitalization”—a measure of fresh investor flows into BTC—rose by $187 billion so far this year, compared to $127 billion for ETH.

“Bitcoin has overperformed Ethereum in certain network fundamental metrics,” CryptoQuant Head of Research Julio Moreno told Decrypt. “For example, the ratio of the number of transactions in the Ethereum network to that in the Bitcoin network has also declined as ETH/BTC price ratio falls.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.