The crypto rally is not giving investors a break at the moment. Ethereum has rallied over the course of December, but has largely underperformed compared to Bitcoin. Until now.
On days when BTC was up 5-8 percent in 24 hours in December, Ethereum was sometimes flat, consolidating around key support levels as capital focused on Bitcoin. Many attribute this to institutional support for the crypto market gathering first in bitcoin and then in altcoins.
However, Ethereum has finally started to run – and is again strongly outperforming BTC after the leading cryptocurrency began to consolidate in the $33,000 range.
Ethereum is experiencing a strong reversal
Ethereum has risen from $750 to prices as high as $950 in the last 24 hours, gaining 26 percent against the U.S. dollar.
While ETH has since declined minimally to $947, the cryptocurrency has risen over 20 percent in the last 24 hours and around 30 percent in the last 48 hours alone.
Chart of ETH price performance over the last three days.
The rally begins just as bitcoin stalls. BTC is down 0.5 percent in the last 24 hours as capital starts to shift into altcoins.
This isn’t really unexpected.
Matt Kaye, managing partner at Blockhead Capital, posted the tweet below earlier this weekend. According to the tweet, ETH could shoot higher if BTC remains stagnant.
Prominent analyst „Light“ also thinks now is the time for altcoins to surpass bitcoin.
We can expect a strong 2021
According to Andrew Keys, a former executive at ConsenSys, Ethereum (Go to Buy Ethereum Guide) is likely to do extremely well in 2021 due to ETH2 and the continued growth of decentralized finance:
„The Eth 2.0 upgrade will catapult the network’s performance and attract even more attention from corporates and institutional investors, driving the price of the Ether currency to new heights.“
Keys estimates that the total value locked up in the decentralized financial space will grow to $150 billion. According to Keys, this will be a byproduct of other blockchains transferring their tokens to Ethereum via cross-chain bridges, which may drive the value of Ethereum and the DeFi space as a whole.