When it comes to outperforming rival Bitcoin, Ethereum has been on a roll. Despite being seven years younger than its predecessor, the cryptocurrency has enjoyed significant market success, resulting in better returns on investment than bitcoin. This has been the case since the introduction of ethereum into the mainstream, and it is expected to continue through the end of 2021, with triple-digit outperformance.
Many cryptocurrencies in the market reached fresh all-time highs in 2021. Bitcoin and ethereum investors benefited immensely from these rallies, which saw each digital asset increase by at least 100% at some point throughout the year. When comparing the performance of both digital assets for the year, Ethereum has fared far better than bitcoin.
The altcoin experienced a multi-year range breakout on the ETHBTC pair, which established itself as one of the year’s dominant trends. On a year-to-year basis, ethereum has increased by about 500% this year. In comparison, bitcoin gained at a pace of nearly 95 percent during the same time span.
This is the greatest performance differential for both digital assets in five years, dating back to 2015 when ETH was originally introduced. Since then, ETH has proven to be a crypto market force to be reckoned with, and its constant outperformance has been a big driver in its acceptance by investors.
However, despite its performance in contrast to bitcoin, it lags far behind in market capitalization. Currently, bitcoin has a market cap of over $1 trillion, whereas ETH has around $490 billion.
Ethereum is not the only cryptocurrency that has outperformed its predecessors significantly. While ethereum remains one of the most popular layer 1s, others have outperformed it. This year saw a significant increase in Layer 1 protocols, owing to the advent of decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFTs, which shook the market.
Networks such as Solana, Avalanche, Terra Luna, Fantom, and Harmony all had a phenomenal year. These Layer 1 protocols competed with the big dogs and came out top. Each of these networks performed so well that they outperformed ethereum.
They have all taken substantial market share from ethereum in the last year and are anticipated to continue to do so in the coming year. They have risen regarding users and the amount of data stored on the networks, and the trend does not appear to be waning anytime soon.
The native tokens of these networks have grown in reaction to the protocols’ adoption. It has driven prices to all-time highs, as well as performance figures indicating that Layer 1s will certainly win in 2021.
