TL;DR Breakdown:
- ETH annual returns overtake BTC for the first time.
- Ether is up by over 500% in the last 1 year, compared to Bitcoin’s 200% surge.
- Current market analysis suggests that ETH could overtake BTC for the no 1 spot in 2022.
Ethereum, the second-largest crypto in the industry has soared over 530% in 2021, and we still have December to see off. It means that investors who bought Ether on 1st January 2021 are now enjoying a 530% return. This is quite the milestone for Ethereum, as this is the first time the altcoin has produced a higher annual return than Bitcoin. BTC has pumped just over 200% in 2021, starting the year just below $20K and reaching an all-time high of $69,044 in November.
There are other major coins in the market that produced monumental returns in 2021, like Binance Coin, Cardano, Solana, or even meme coins like Doge and Shiba Inu. However, Bitcoin and Ethereum are still two of the biggest coins in the industry in terms of both market cap and adoption.
Ether’s rapid growth in 2021 is mostly associated with the wider adoption and usage of the Ethereum blockchain network. The growing popularity of NFTs and ERC-20 tokens like Shiba Inu or Chainlink has boosted Ether’s value throughout this year. Both Ethereum and Bitcoin prices have shown comparatively less volatility, especially in the third and fourth quarters of the year. However, Ethereum prices have shown tremendous stability even during strong bearish trends and regulatory disputes.
For example, BTC was done by over 7% in November’s bear market, but ETH was up by 3%. The altcoin has shown tremendous support in the $4K price zone, as its price didn’t consolidate below this level in the last 40 days. Crypolitan analysts predict that Ethereum will continue this bullish trend heading into the new year.
Will Ethereum become the leading crypto in 2022?
Ether’s market cap is almost half of Bitcoin’s. ETH has a market cap of around $533 billion, while BTC has $1.1 trillion. Closing down this gap might seem impossible because of the growing adoption of BTC, but we have to consider that Ether is progressing at a much faster rate than Bitcoin.
The market cap of ETH was sitting below $70 billion a year ago. That’s over 660% growth, while Bitcoin’s market cap increased by around 170%. There’s also the growing popularity of NFTs, which are minted and assigned on the Ethereum blockchain. Almost every artist, developer, sports team are launching NFTs nowadays.
The Ethereum 2.0 update has also reduced environmental concerns regarding ETH mining. Last week, the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin also proposed plans to lower gas fees on the network. These prospects hint towards the assumption that ETH might fill that $500 billion gap faster than we think.
Bitcoin seems to have reached a certain level where its growth is much more paced than anyother crypto in the market. Although this is a great sign for BTC investors as it increases the coins prospect to be held as an inflation hedge, Ethereum’s rapid growth does pose a significant threat to Bitcoins No 1 crown in the market.
Based on the current state of the entire crypto market, it would be rather surprising not to see Ether overtake Bitcoin’s market cap in the near future. ETH is currently trading at $4,496, during the time of writing.
