- Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin in terms of year-to-date growth.
- Overall interest in Ethereum NFTs and its ecosystems dropped significantly.
Ethereum [ETH] has had a tumultuous time in 2024, with prices experiencing enormous fluctuations during this period. Despite the volatile trajectory of ETH’s price movement, it has still managed to outperform BTC.
Ethereum comes out on top
According to Artemis data, Ethereum not only outperformed Bitcoin in 2024, but also managed to surpass tokens in other sectors such as AI, Data Services and RWA (Real World Assets).
Source:
Interestingly, Ethereum’s price increase over the past year was driven by retail investors.
AMBCrypto’s analysis of Santiment’s data showed that addresses holding anywhere from 0.1 to 10 ETH had accumulated large amounts of ETH in recent months.
In contrast, whale investors were observed selling their assets and not showing any interest in accumulation.
This could be positive for Ethereum in the long run, as the presence of a large number of retail investors could make the Ethereum network much more decentralized.
However, major whale sell-offs could negatively impact ETH’s price movement in the short term.
Source: Santiment
At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $3,765.89 and its price was up 0.21% over the past 24 hours. Despite the price increase, network growth had plummeted in recent days.
A decrease in network growth indicates that the frequency with which new addresses traded ETH had dropped significantly.
If new addresses continue to lose interest in ETH, it could negatively impact the price of ETH in the long run.
Furthermore, the rate at which ETH was traded had also decreased, implying a decrease in total transactions of ETH.
Source: Santiment
Activity on the network
Another factor is the overall health of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Read Ethereum’s [ETH] Price forecast 2024-25
According to AMBCrypto’s analysis of Santiment’s data, daily active addresses on the Ethereum network have fallen from 630,000 to 430,000 in recent weeks.
This indicated that users were moving to other networks and platforms.