Ethereum continues to explode with 25% rally – while bitcoin stagnates at $33,000
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 Bitcoin Compass capital focused on Bitcoin. Many attribute this to institutional support for the crypto market gathering first in bitcoin and then in altcoins.
But Ethereum has finally started to run – and is again strongly outperforming BTC after the leading cryptocurrency started to consolidate in the $33,000 range.
Ethereum undergoes a strong reversal
Ethereum has risen from $750 to prices as high as $950 in the last 24 hours, gaining 26 percent against the US dollar.
While ETH has since retreated 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. Source: ETHUSD from TradingView
The rally begins just as bitcoin stalls. BTC has fallen 0.5 per cent in the last 24 hours as capital starts to shift into altcoins.
This is not really unexpected.
Matt Kaye, managing partner at Blockhead Capital, posted the tweet below earlier this weekend. According to this, ETH could shoot higher if BTC stagnates.
- Efficiently extreme.
- Peak liquidity.
- Peak near term BTC euphoria.
- Peak near term ALT bearishness.
I wonder what happens over the next few days of ranging…
A lot of people short $ETH for high beta downside protection might find themselves in need of protection 🦧 https://t.co/pFpsgvjxLp pic.twitter.com/EEBnDIusGW
– Matt.sBTC 🧐 (@Matt__Kaye) January 2, 2021
Prominent analyst „Light“ also thinks now is the time for altcoins to surpass bitcoin.
Think BTC is done for now.
Everyone has had a taste of the forbidden fruit that is alts. Hard to reverse that.
– light (@lightcrypto) January 3, 2021
A strong 2021 awaits us
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 decentralised 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 decentralised financial space will grow to $150 billion. According to Keys, this will be a by-product 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.