Ethereum is starting to eat Bitcoin’s lunch – is this the start of the ‘flippening’?
Over the past week, Ethereum's price has plummeted by nearly 8%.
- Ethereum's total market capitalisation now stands at AUD$685 billion, which is nearly 54% of Bitcoin's net total value of around AUD$1.26 billion.
- Silk Road's alleged co-founder Ross Ulbricht has been able to raise a sizeable AUD$8.8 million (US$6.2 million) via his first ever NFT offering.
- A new study shows that a single ETH transaction may be enough to meet the daily power needs of a US household for an entire day.
Even after having maintained a decent level of positive price action amidst a marketwide sell-off recently, the last 24 hours have seen Ethereum, the world's second largest cryptocurrency by total market capitalisation, register losses in excess of 5%. At press time, ETH is trading at a price point of AUD$5,818.
For a couple of months running, ETH has severely outperformed BTC, as is made evident by the fact that the ETH/BTC pair has rallied by over 230% over the course of the year – all while hitting a new all-time-high of 0.089 BTC on 9 December.
On a more technical note, Ethereum's current market cap of AUD$685 billion (US$490 billion) now stands at 54% of Bitcoin's total valuation of AUD$1.26 billion (US$903 billion). To put things into perspective, this ratio stood at just 15% at the end of 2020, suggesting that a "flippening" of sorts has definitely taken place.
Furthermore, derivatives data available online shows that Ethereum could be in for more positive price action in the near future, especially with the altcoin continuing to showcase a higher "futures basis rate" despite the asset being down more than 15% from it's all time high of around AUD$6,850.
Ethereum's energy consumption continues to raise eyebrows
As per research data available online, the Ethereum network in its current iteration continues to be quite power intensive, with the platform using more energy than the entire nation of Costa Rica annually. In fact, a single ETH transaction requires around 30 kilowatt-hours, which is enough to power an entire American household for a day.
To put it another way, the study notes that 100 ETH transactions are enough to fuel a Tesla Model 3 for a total running distance of approximately 400 kilometres. That said, once the Ethereum ecosystem makes its long-awaited switch to its proof-of-stake based ETH2.0 framework, these metrics may reduce quite substantially.
Silk Road alleged founder raises millions via his debut NFT
Ross Ulbricht, the alleged founder and owner of the now defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road, has been able to auction off his first ever non-fungible token (NFT) for a whopping US$6.2 million (AUD$8.8 million or 1,446 ETH approx.). The auction was facilitated by a platform called SuperRare at the Art Basel Miami showcase.
The purchase was made by FreeRossDAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation, meant primarily to help raise funds for Ulbricht's mounting legal expenses as well as help "advance prison reforms" globally. Thus, it will be interesting to see how things continue to play out for Ross from here on out.
Interested in cryptocurrency? Learn more about the basics with our beginner's guide to Bitcoin, dive deeper by learning about Ethereum and see what blockchain can do with our simple guide to DeFi.
Disclosure: The author owns a range of cryptocurrencies at the time of writing
