Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has lagged behind Bitcoin on 85% of its trading days. The ETH/BTC ratio, which measures Ether’s value against Bitcoin, hit a five-year low of 0.018 on April 9. This is reminiscent of December 2019, when the ratio was similarly low, with ETH priced at $125 and BTC around $7,000.
Currently, Ethereum is valued at approximately $1,670, as per CoinMarketCap. While Bitcoin also experienced a decline—down just 6% to $75,000, which is still over 275% above its peak in the 2017 bull market—it later surged past $83,000 by day’s end. In stark contrast, ETH has dipped beneath its 2018 market cycle peak, effectively negating nearly seven years of relative gains for Ether and putting most long-term investors at a loss.
Ethereum managed to outperform Bitcoin briefly from mid-2015 to mid-2017 and again in late 2019 through early 2020. However, since then, Bitcoin has been the market leader. James Check, an analyst at Glassnode, pointed out that Ethereum has only outperformed Bitcoin on 15% of its trading days throughout its history.
Concerns regarding the current state of the Ethereum network have started to emerge. On April 8, Web3 researcher Stacy Muur observed that the number of active Ethereum addresses has remained relatively constant over the last four years. “I have great affection for Ethereum. Nonetheless, it’s important to acknowledge the facts: Ethereum has maintained [approximately] the same number of active addresses for the past 4 years,” she shared on X.
Conversely, some believe that user engagement has migrated to Ethereum’s layer-2 solutions, such as Arbitrum and Optimism. These networks have seen significant growth in total value locked, indicating that users are gravitating toward more affordable and efficient options within the Ethereum ecosystem. Data from L2beat supports the notion of heightened adoption of these scaling solutions.
The average transaction fees on Ethereum have decreased to $0.41, the lowest level since late August. This marks a drastic decline from the peak of $15.21 observed in the last two years, suggesting decreased congestion in the network.
Nic Carter from Castle Island Ventures attributed Ethereum’s declining investment appeal to the rise of layer-2 solutions and rampant token creation. He mentioned that “Greedy Eth L2s” are capturing activity without significantly benefiting the base layer, criticizing the Ethereum community for permitting the platform to become “overwhelmed by its own tokens.”
Quinn Thompson, founder of Lekker Capital, remarked that Ethereum is “utterly dead” as an investment opportunity, pointing to diminishing transaction activity, reduced user growth, and collapsing network revenues. Carter had previously cautioned in September 2024 that Ethereum’s fee revenue had plummeted by 99% over six months as L2s began to dominate user and revenue flows.
