Ethereum (ETH) Ether Outperforms Bitcoin (BTC) Rises

After a rocky week, most cryptocurrencies traded higher on Friday.

Ethereum (ETH) was the star performer, gaining as much as 5% in the last 24 hours and breaking beyond $3,000 for the first time in two weeks. In the meantime, bitcoin (BTC) surpassed $42,000 and was up 3% during the same time period.

On Friday, stocks rose as well, while gold, a typical safe haven asset, fell. Stocks have recovered, and some alternative cryptocurrencies (Altcoins) have outperformed, indicating that investors have a stronger appetite for risk.

In a Friday email, Sean Farrell, vice president of digital asset strategy at FundStrat, said, “We remain hopeful that any drops for ETH and BTC are buying opportunities.”

Prices at the time of Writing

• Bitcoin (BTC): $42,243, +2.83%
• Ether (ETH): $2,981, +4.80%
• S&P 500 daily close: $4,463, +1.17%
• Gold: $1,920 per troy ounce, −1.16%
• Ten-year Treasury yield daily close: 2.15%

Buy orders versus sell orders:

Following the increase on Wednesday, Bitcoin’s trading volume has continued to drop across exchanges. Furthermore, on Friday, the volume of buy orders versus sell orders in the futures market was balanced, suggesting that the current price increase is unconvincing.

The average funding rate, or the cost of holding long BTC contracts in the perpetual futures market posted on major exchanges, increased, perhaps signalling optimistic sentiment.

Also, the Bored Ape Yacht Club-linked ApeCoin (APE) surged 90% on its second trading day, jumping from $6.48 to over $15 after having fallen 80% on Thursday.

ETH bounces on merge progress:

The development on merging the Ethereum blockchain’s mainnet with the Beacon Chain is one of the reasons behind Ether’s increase.

Shaurya Malwa– Ethereum merged on the Kiln testnet earlier last week, paving the way for the blockchain’s eventual transition to a proof-of-stake network, with network validators now generating post-merge blocks containing transactions.

David Duong, head of institutional research– “The number of active validators on the Beacon Chain has risen in tandem, from 300,702 at the end of February to 315,576 as of March 17. This is a 4.9 percent gain in just 17 days, compared to 3.9 percent for the entire month of February and 4.8 percent for the entire month of March “”The entire month of January,”

Slowing activity on the Ethereum network:

Reportedly, per FundStrat’s Farrell, one explanation for the slowdown is a drop in demand for pricey non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are mostly minted and exchanged on the Ethereum network. Google search interest for NFTs peaked in mid-January.

Farrell also mentioned ETH’s price-to-sales ratio, which has risen to almost 50 from 17 just a few months ago – a substantial surge that could indicate a frothy market.