Ethereum has insufficient bitcoin at 85% of all trading days since its launch in 2015. The ETH/BTC ratio, which tracks ether values compared to Bitcoin, fell to its five-year low of 0.018 on April 9th.
According to Coinmarketcap, Ethereum is currently trading for around $1,670. Bitcoin also fell by only 6%, holding at $75,000. This is over 275% of the bull market peak in 2017. In contrast, ETH has fallen beyond the 2018 market cycle. Analysts say this effectively erases the relative profits of the ether for nearly seven years, putting most long-term holders in a loss position.
Ethereum temporarily outperformed Bitcoin between mid-2015 and mid-2017 to late 2019 and early 2020, and between mid-2015 and late 2017. Bitcoin has been a consistent market leader ever since. GlassNode analyst James Check emphasizes that Ethereum is superior to Bitcoin at 15% of trading days throughout history.
There is growing concern about the current state of the Ethereum Network. On April 8, Web3 researcher Stacy Muur noted that the number of active Ethereum addresses has remained roughly the same over the past four years. “I love Ethereum, but it’s time to face reality. Ethereum has had the same number of active addresses for the past four years,” she posted on X.
Others claim that user activity has migrated to layer 2 networks of Ethereum, such as Arbitrum and Optimism. These platforms have grown significantly with locked totals, suggesting that users are moving towards cheaper and faster alternatives within the Ethereum ecosystem. Data from L2Beat confirms an increase in adoption of these scaling solutions.
The average trading fee for Ethereum also fell to $0.41. This is the lowest since late August. This indicates a significant drop from the $15.21 peak seen over the last two years, indicating a decrease in network congestion.
Nick Carter of Castle Island Ventures has denounced the Ethereum weakening investment incident for the rise of Layer 2 and the creation of unconfirmed tokens. He said that “greedy ETH L2” is an activity that has been absorbed without giving much back to the basic layer, criticising the Ethereum community for the platform being “buried in an avalanche of its own tokens.”
Quinn Thompson, founder of Towker Capital, also said Ethereum was “fully dead” as an investment, citing a decline in trading activity, lower user growth and lower network revenues. Carter previously warned in September 2024 that Ethereum’s fee revenue had dropped 99% in six months as L2S took over the user and revenue stream.