Ethereum has outperformed Bitcoin just 15% of the time since its launch

Ethereum has only outperformed Bitcoin for 15% of all trading days since its launch almost a decade ago, according to analysts.

Since Ether began trading in mid-2015, it has underperformed against Bitcoin 85% of the time, analyst James Check said in an April 8 X post.

Data shared by Check shows that Ether significantly outperformed Bitcoin in its early years from mid-2015 to around mid-2017, and it had two short periods in late 2019 and early 2020 when the ETH to BTC ratio was in Ether’s favor.

However, Bitcoin has outperformed Ether for the past five years.

ETH/BTC profitable days. Source: James Check

The ETH/BTC ratio, which shows the price of Ether in terms of Bitcoin, fell to a five-year low of 0.018 on April 9, according to TradingView. 

The last time the ratio fell below its current level was December 2019, when ETH crashed to $125 while Bitcoin was trading at around $7,000. 

Ether has wiped out seven years of gains, plummeting a further 10% over the past 24 hours to under $1,450, below its 2018 market cycle peak.

ETH fell to $1,400 in early trading on April 9, according to CoinGecko. Comparatively, Bitcoin lost 6% on the day in a fall to $75,000, which is still 275% higher than its peak during the bull market seven years ago.

Ethereum backers air concern of “stagnation”

Ethereum advocates have aired concerns about the network’s growth as the token struggled to gain traction earlier this year when Bitcoin hit a new price peak.

“I love Ethereum. However, it’s time to face reality: Ethereum has had [around] the same number of active addresses for the past 4 years.” Web3 researcher Stacy Muur posted to X on April 8.

However, other researchers noted that most of the new addresses are on Ethereum layer-2 scaling networks, which have surged in terms of value locked onchain over the past couple of years, according to L2beat. 

While most long-term ETH investors are now holding at a loss, technical indicators such as fractal patterns seen in 2018 and 2022 suggest that the asset is approaching oversold levels and a bottom could be near the $1,000 level, according to Cointelegraph analysis.