Editor's Note: This article comes fromCointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)Editor's Note: This article comes from
Cointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)
Cointelegraph Chinese (ID: CointelegraphChina)Let's start with the numbers: Ethereum prices are up 1,200% from their March 2020 lows in the wake of the coronavirus-induced market crash, while Bitcoin is only up around 700%. Of course, against the backdrop of Bitcoin's all-time high of $40,000, Ethereum's rise to $1,400 doesn't seem all that amazing. Additionally, Ethereum’s market capitalization is five times less than Bitcoin’s as of today. But which is more important to investors: nice numbers and track records for assets in a portfolio, or high income?
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We have every reason to believe that Ethereum will continue to rise in 2021 and bring investors more profits than the "most famous cryptocurrency" Bitcoin.
Ethereum is the number one platform for building blockchain projects and launching decentralized applications. The graph below shows the transaction volume of unique ERC-20 tokens in the first few years since the launch of the Ethereum network. Although the market expansion of blockchain startups has slowed since the initial coin offering bubble burst in 2018, their total number is still growing.
Even though Ethereum has strong competitors such as Tron, Polkadot, Cardano, Cosmos, and Tezos, Vitalik Buterin’s Ethereum platform is still the leader in this direction.growing transaction volumeIn 2020, more than $1 trillion in transaction volume was recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. This figure exceeds the transaction volume of payment giant PayPal. PayPal has more than 350 million users, and its average transaction volume per quarter generally does not exceed $200 billion.
Also, keep in mind that network fees incurred for each transaction are paid in ETH. And since the network’s growth rate remains high, we can confidently expect the “bull” trend in ETH to continue. In any case, interest in the cryptocurrency is increasing, as are the number of active wallets, the number of transactions on the network, and the average transaction size.Development of the DeFi industryDespite Bitcoin’s leadership in the cryptocurrency market, Ethereum remains the leader in the young decentralized finance space. DeFi lending and staking projects, which were very popular in the summer of 2020, continue to grow, attracting new investment.
Since the beginning of 2020, the total value locked in DeFi has increased by nearly 3300%, from $687 million to $23.2 billion. And Ethereum is the main platform on which most new DeFi projects and stablecoins are created and launched.The issuance of stablecoins continues to grow, as fiat-backed digital assets with low volatility are a very convenient tool for quick settlement between users, forming trading pairs on crypto exchanges, and gaining value from cryptocurrencies. Save money amid volatility.
