Ethereum price: Breaking out of Bitcoin’s shadow

Ether is currently showcasing 30-day gains of over 110% as compared to Bitcoin's 20% over the same window.

• Experts believe that increased decoupling between ETH and BTC could usher in an 'alt season' in the near term.
• Ether's value has the potential to climb even higher especially as the Chicago Mercantile Group gets ready to roll out its ETH Futures offering starting next month.
• Over the course of the last 12 months, Ether has surged by 740%.

After hitting an all-time high of $1,450 a few days ago, the second-largest cryptocurrency by total market cap experienced some pullback to settle down around the $1,370 range.

One of the most notable aspects of ETHs latest run is that it has exhibited 30-day gains of nearly 115% as compared with Bitcoin's gains of around 23% over the same time period.

As a result, it now seems as though Ether is fast moving out of Bitcoin's shadows and is starting to exhibit independent market movements that may have a direct effect on the value of other decently capped altcoins available in the market today.

Providing his thoughts on Ether's growing dominance, Chandler Song, co-founder of Ankr, a Web3.0 platform as well as DeFi solution for eth2.0, told Finder that while Bitcoin will remain the clear alpha of the crypto space, Ether's rise as an independent crypto asset will inevitability continue to garner momentum, adding:

"With Ethereum growing as the base layer for the decentralized finance and internet of the future, the way investors value it changing quite rapidly. At the moment, instead of seeing drops in Ethereum's value as a discouraging sign, investors should expect it to regain its positions fairly quickly, scaling up to unprecedented high's in February."

Chandler's optimism is probably best highlighted by the fact that the ETH/BTC pair is breaking out of its multi-year downtrend and is currently sitting at its highest levels in well over a year - since September 2019 to be exact. This not only suggests that big things may be in store for Ether in the near-to-mid term but also for the altcoin market in general.

Ethereum's rally is highly value-driven rather than speculation based

It is worth recalling that during the 2019 bear cycle, ETH was one of the worst hit large-cap cryptocurrencies, falling by a whopping 85% at one point in relation to BTC (even dropping to the $80 mark), thus leading to fears that the project may have finally hit a dead end. That being said, the ongoing surge seems to largely be the result of a dedicated Ethereum community spending 3 long years building the project's ecosystem even in the face of continuous ups and downs.

In this regard, the research team at Santiment, a market intelligence platform for cryptocurrencies, has suggested that Ethereum's recent development activity has showcased a direct correlation with its value, thus suggesting that the aforementioned de-coupling hype is rooted in hard facts and not just wishful thinking. On the subject, Rafael Cosman CEO & Co-Founder of TrustToken told finder:

"I think the overall bull run will likely continue for another 6+ months and see BTC and ETH both significantly higher than where they are today. ETH may also continue to gain ground against BTC in the mid-term."

However, in Cosman's view, Ether and BTC will continue to be correlated - in some form or the other - even though the former has established itself quite strongly with an independent ecosystem of its own. That being said, he does see a second wave of DeFi driven institutional crypto adoption happening in the future, potentially "resulting in an ETH-led rally for the whole market".

What comes next?

Even though one may be tempted to believe that an incoming Ether rally is imminent in the coming few days and weeks, especially with ETH futures becoming available on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) come February, there is also a chance that ETH could witness some amount of monetary pullback, especially as the current activity surrounding the ETH/BTC pair starts to cool off a bit.

Only time will tell what the future holds for Ether but one thing is for sure that the coming few months will be quite exciting for the industry as a whole.

Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing

Picture: CoinGecko