{"id":510824,"date":"2023-10-10T08:12:52","date_gmt":"2023-10-10T06:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=510824"},"modified":"2023-10-10T08:12:52","modified_gmt":"2023-10-10T06:12:52","slug":"ethers-loss-is-bitcoins-gain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cryptocurrency\/510824-ethers-loss-is-bitcoins-gain.html","title":{"rendered":"Ether’s loss is Bitcoin’s gain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ether is ceding ground to market bellwether Bitcoin with investors seeking refuge in the most widely-held digital asset while the recent downturn in crypto prices deepens.<\/p>\n

The second largest digital currency by market value has slumped around 18% since June, while Bitcoin was down around half that amount during the same period.<\/p>\n

Ether dropped as much as 5.4% to $1,639 on Monday, and the original cryptocurrency slipped as much as 2.3% to $27,290.<\/p>\n

That has helped to reduce Ether\u2019s percentage of the total capitalisation of the $1 trillion crypto market to 17.8% from around 18.4% at the start of the year, according to data compiled by CoinMarketCap.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Bitcoin\u2019s dominance has risen to 50.3% from 40%.<\/p>\n

In recent weeks, concern over Ethereum\u2019s growth and prospects have swirled, as activity and\u00a0fees<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0on the network plummeted and the coin\u2019s supply began to\u00a0grow<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0again after months of deflation.<\/p>\n

Fear of\u00a0centralisation<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in the Ethereum network has been growing as well.<\/p>\n

Fresh turmoil in the Middle East and the possibility of more interest-rate increases has many crypto investors shifting to Bitcoin, which has long outperformed in bear markets.<\/p>\n

Overall, Bitcoin is up 66% this year, compared with 32% for Ether.<\/p>\n

The difference is even more staggering if looking at data since 15 September, 2022, when Ethereum underwent a network upgrade called the Merge<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that kept investors on tenterhooks for months.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact, Ether has been massively underperforming the broad market since the Merge, with both the ETH\/BTC price and volume ratio trending downwards over the past year,\u201d according to a report from researcher Kaiko.<\/p>\n

\u201cEther\u2019s underperformance is likely due to the ongoing impact of the bear market, which historically has seen traders turn to Bitcoin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some near-term factors have added to the pressure.<\/p>\n

The Ethereum Foundation, which is working to grow the network\u2019s ecosystem, sold about\u00a0$2.7 million<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0worth of Ether on Monday, and converted it into stablecoin USDC, according to data tracker Etherscan and Arkham Intelligence.<\/p>\n

The foundation didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

Some traders also pointed out that crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun moved some of his Ether. Sun told Bloomberg he is \u201cnot selling,\u201d and was just moving his Ether between wallets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am bullish about ETH and I think currently is a good time to buy,\u201d Sun said in a message.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the futures-based Ether exchange-traded funds that started trading on US markets last week have \u201cfailed to attract meaningful volume and boost crypto markets,\u201d according to Kaiko.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be that the Ethereum futures ETF launches may have caused Ethereum to be overbought by investors or traders, and the launches were rather mundane and underwhelming,\u201d said James Seyffart, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n

Now read: Liquidators of South Africa\u2019s biggest pyramid scheme in history to pay victims back millions<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent weeks, concern over Ethereum\u2019s growth and prospects have swirled, as activity and\u00a0fees\u00a0on the network plummeted and the coin\u2019s supply began to\u00a0grow\u00a0again after months of deflation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":454791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44696],"tags":[187,51601,43338,42124],"class_list":["post-510824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency","tag-bitcoin","tag-coinmarketcap","tag-ether","tag-ethereum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}