Despite the massive pump of Bitcoin (BTC), altcoins still find their way to have a leg-over it. While almost everyone in the crypto space is hyped about the most anticipated BTC highlight which is the halving, ETH is seen to be the 2020 dark horse.

Bitcoin might have broken the $9,000 level on January 18^th, which is for the first time since November 2019, but major altcoins like Ethereum (ETH) have seen with more massive moves.

At the beginning of 2020, ETH has already risen by 40% after surging from $128 to $175. In comparison, BTC has recorded only with 30%.

Another Win for Ethereum

After the BTC block reward halving, the price of the leading crypto asset by market capitalization is expected to hit a fresh all-time high (ATH). On the other hand, many are expecting that once the trend continues, ETH could bring more profits to the investors.

Last week, Ethereum’s price grew by more than 14%. That is a piece of clear evidence that ETH outperformed BTC as it only gained 8% during a similar time span. In addition, during the entire January, the price had been surging at approximately 40%. According to some crypto analysts, the recent price rally and positive market performance of ETH coexisted with the continuous growth of the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

In the BTC halving by May 2020, the daily supply rate will plummet to 900 BTC/day from 1,800 BTC/per. This event is expected to make the crypto asset more expensive and scarcer. DeFi being the ETH’s major bullish indicated, can help the altcoin to solely breakout.

Once the Bitcoin became a more macro asset, then ETH can possibly experience better trading days. If there’s a drop in the rate of BTC, then it could bring a massive impact on ETH as well.

Why Is Ethereum Continue to Surge Higher?

With the macro crypto pullback influenced by Bitcoin, the Ethereum market gains are made possible.

For example, the geographical issues between the US and Iran at the beginning of 2020 made investors seek safe-haven assets, and it benefitted the BTC. Having the highest correlation with BTC, Ethereum followed the price rally of BTC at first.

Later on, Ethereum picked up momentum after the global media was attracted by the decentralized finance growth.

As Ethereum is being benefitted by the uptrend of BTC and considered to be effective in growing distributed lending with the use of smart contracts, the altcoin resulted to an interesting price rally this year among investors.

Currently, the rate of ETH is $189.49. Data analyst Skew noted that the ETH bulls expect that the Ethereum-linked future contracts will likely to burst to $600 in July 2020. Besides, he also noted that there would be a spike in the ETH futures volumes and options throughout the year.

If you’ll remember, ETH ended 2019 with poor market performance. So, many are curious whether or not the second-largest cryptocurrency by the market can deliver impressive trading days and completely outperform the market leader.