Bitcoin has been long cited to be a better form of money, however the latest development casts a shadow of doubt on the claim. In the last few days, Bitcoin has conceded the key metric of most value moved or highest value settled to Ethereum – restricting the data to only native base layer tokens ETH and BTC.
Ethereum has lately enjoyed an advantage in this area, because of the multi-token nature of the platform as well as the recent astronomical rise in the popularity and usage of stablecoins, which are primarily issued on the Ethereum blockchain. But, now it has another feather in it’s cap.
What Does The Data Reveal?
The data from Money Movers – a website tracking the value settled by blockchains predominantly Ethereum and Bitcoin shows that even when stablecoins and all other Ethereum based tokens (mostly ERC-20s) are excluded from the calculation, the value moved in ETH and WETH (wrapped Ether) is still higher than BTC. As of Feb 11 ‘21, Ethereum has settled $13.14B in value and Bitcoin has managed around $9.46B for the day.
But, when stablecoins and other Ethereum based tokens (mostly ERC-20s) are counted, things improve further for Ethereum. As of Feb 11 ‘21, Etheruem has settled $22.51B in value in comparison to Bitcoin’s $9.51B per day figure. Bitcoin doesn’t have multi-token support, which might help in explaining the relatively large difference in values between both blockchains.
There is a valid reason for this, the economic activity on Ethereum has been astronomically rising lately and currently outnumbers all other blockchain platforms. This latest metric flippening is significant in the sense that generally Bitcoin having the largest marketcap and a narrative built around the concept of sound money was expected to settle more value than any project and be the base settlement layer. That’s not the case anymore, it seems.
