The price of bitcoin appreciated nearly 4% for the week ending 27th May, but the figure is perhaps not indicative of the wild trading action the market saw during the period. Such movements came as market observers are becoming more interested in the relationship between bitcoin, the token supporting the world’s longest-running blockchain, and ether, the token for the Ethereum platform.
Bitcoin’s gains, for example, came as ether prices plunged sharply, but it made this climb amid modest trading volumes. By contrast, ether enjoyed robust transaction activity, a sign that points to a potential migration of traders away from bitcoin.
Many market observers are beginning to suggest that these two digital currencies display a negative correlation. Since they both have their respective strengths and weaknesses, and each is publicly traded, experts have begun weighing in on the value of each as an investment.
This perceived competition may not be over any time soon, and one market watcher emphasized that both currencies have quite a bit of potential.
"It is still early to call the winner at this stage," Toya Zhang, senior PR Manager for OKCoin , told CoinDesk.
While developers have created many cryptocurrencies, bitcoin was the first one to reach scale – but some are beginning to think that this state of affairs might change.
Tim Enneking, chairman of cryptocurrency investment manager EAM, said: "[There are now] serious concerns about whether [bitcoin] can do thousands of transactions a second and whether it’s robust enough for widespread use." Ether, which operates at a far smaller scale than bitcoin, does not currently face such challenges. Further, supporters have asserted that ether has far more flexibility and potential than bitcoin, as Ethereum is proving capable of supporting a broader range of applications than bitcoin’s code.
However, ether has done far less to prove itself than bitcoin, as the […]
