During the second half of 2020, there was a growing interest in cryptocurrencies from institutional investors and big capital. However, all the attention of the whales, as well as all the attention of the public, was fixed on Bitcoin. Today, let's see why Ethereum is a more attractive asset and why this cryptocurrency should become the “first cryptocurrency” for every investor.

Let's start with the numbers: ETH’s growth since its March 2020 low after the coronavirus-induced market crash has been 1,200%, whereas BTC has only grown around 700%. ETH’s growth since its March 2020 low after the coronavirus-induced market crash has been 1,200%, whereas BTC has only grown around 700%. Of course, against the backdrop of record highs for Bitcoin, whose price reached 40k, the rise of Ether to $1400 does not seem so impressive. Moreover, the market capitalization of ETH is five times less than the volume of the BTC market. But what is more important for an investor: nice numbers and records of an asset or really high income?

There are very strong reasons to believe that Ether will continue to rise in price in 2021 and bring more profit to investors than the “most famous cryptocurrency,” Bitcoin.

Demand among developers

Ethereum is the number-one platform for building blockchain projects and launching decentralized applications. The chart below displays the number of unique ERC-20 tokens traded during the first years since the launch of the Ethereum network. And despite the fact that the rate of expansion of the market for blockchain startups has slowed down since the initial coin offering bubble burst in 2018, their total number is still growing.

And even despite the fact that Ethereum has serious competitors — such as Tron, Polkadot, Cardano, Cosmos and Tezos — Vitalik Buterin's cryptocurrency platform continues to be a leader in this direction.

Growing transaction volume

During 2020, more than $1 trillion worth of transactions were recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. These figures exceed the transaction volume of payments giants like PayPal, which is used by over 350 million users and has with average volumes that do not generally exceed $200 billion per quarter.

Also, keep in mind that each transaction generates network fees paid in ETH. And since the network's growth rates are still high, we can confidently expect the continuation of the “bullish” trend of ETH. In any case, interest in cryptocurrency is increasing, as is the number of active wallets, the number of transactions on the network and the average transaction size.

Source: Cointelegraph