Since its launch in 2015, Ethereum has become a rising star and a popular currency in the crypto world. It presents game-changing potential with the help of its flexible blockchain that supports decentralized applications and sophisticated smart contracts. Meanwhile, the crypto king, Bitcoin, has maintained its position and upward trajectory and remained the largest digital coin by market cap.
However, in the last few years, Ethereum has gained more significant ground in terms of attention and activity. Experts predict that Ethereum’s improvements may overtake Bitcoin as the biggest cryptocurrency shortly.
Let’s discover more about these two cryptocurrencies to see who will be the largest digital coin in 2024 and beyond.
The crypto market overview
In December 2023, the global virtual currencies market cap was $1.74 trillion. Between these, Ethereum stands for $276 billion, while Bitcoin at $857 billion. To become the largest digital coin, Bitcoin has experienced a slow but somehow steady growth over the years.
On the other hand, Ethereum has benefited from faster growth, especially recently. For example, the market cap of Ethereum has increased massively in the last two years, and the price and the market cap have almost doubled from $80 billion to $162 billion. This increase is partly related to development activity in the NFT ecosystems and DeFi. The sectors of nonfungible tokens and decentralized finance created on Bitcoin have exploded in the last few years. For instance, the total value of DeFi reached $51.881 billion in 2023, growing from $20 billion in 2021 to $100 billion in 2022.
At the same time, the trade value of Ethereum also increased and reached $12 billion at the beginning of 2022 before it entered a cooling market. Nowadays, the NFT market could recover, but it will have a long road to reach its all-time highs again.
If the innovation on apps will propel Ethereum further than the steadier “digital gold” features that Bitcoin is appreciated for, then ETH could realistically overtake BTC by 2024. However, the macroeconomic conditions and Bitcoin’s flagship advantage could continue dominating the crypto market.
Bitcoin vs Ethereum: main differences
While Ethereum and Bitcoin share some similarities, as they are both digital currencies that run on blockchain networks, they also have key differences in their core capabilities and purposes. Bitcoin was created by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 as a network that allows peer-to-peer transactions that do not rely on third-party financial institutions. Thus, Bitcoin’s blockchain enables users to transact directly without an intermediary. Also, because it represents the first and most popular cryptocurrency, Bitcoin is often considered “digital gold,” a reliable long-term value store.
On the other hand, Ethereum was founded by Vitalik Buterin in 2013 to overcome the limits of Ethereum. Ethereum is not just a platform for transactions; it also powers games, decentralized applications, NFTs and more. Ethereum has a flexible scripting language and focuses more on letting developers build their own applications that leverage the decentralization features and blockchain’s security.
Bitcoin’s advantages include increased value for its limited supply and first-mover brand recognition, increased stability, higher levels of decentralization and greater security. Regarding its drawbacks, Bitcoin has constrained scripting capabilities that only allow basic peer-to-peer transactions, slower settlement times and progression, as the upgrades require a community consensus.
Ethereum has experienced rapid growth as it includes many innovations and has greater potential with wider capabilities that don’t just include money uses. Disadvantages include lower stability, centralized instability risks, congestion issues, high fees and more significant complexities that require a high technical understanding.
How could Ethereum surpass Bitcoin?
The features that set Ethereum apart are its innovation and real-world applicability, which is greater than Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer payment functionality. Ethereum allows developers to create decentralized applications for tokens, gaming, finance, data storage and more. Additionally, the programmable and flexible blockchain encourages sophisticated functionality that powers the expansion of the Web3 ecosystem.
At the moment, plenty of companies leverage Ethereum for decentralization, security and transparency. For example, the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance was especially formed to create a stronger bridge between public networks and enterprises, and it has important members like Microsoft, Intel and JPMorgan that are constantly working on projects that handle information worth tens of billions.
Another benefit of Ethereum is that it changed to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism that enhanced sustainability and attracted more users. Given the fiery growth in applications like NFTs and DeFi, substantial adoption, sustainability alternatives and upgrades to improve scalability, Ethereum’s futures look bright, and it might take Bitcoin’s status as the number one crypto ecosystem.
Ethereum or Bitcoin: which one is more likely to win in 2024?
Ethereum’s accelerating adoption across applications, development activity and the launch of new upgrades position it very well for plenty of other exponential advancements in the following years. Many improvements expected to appear in 2024 will resolve the issues of high fees and network congestion. 55% of the blockchain experts expect Ethereum to surpass Bitcoin by 2025. Ethereum promises to solve the concerns of its users, and because of this fact, it moved to a proof-of-stake model that decreases electricity usage and meets the demands of people who want to use more sustainable options.
Of course, Bitcoin will still have the first-mover advantage, but its familiarity and brand strength could fall behind innovation, just like it happened in the past with numerous other technologies. This is why the 2024 projections that Ethereum will beat Bitcoin do not seem just ambitious but also pragmatic.
Conclusion
Ethereum shows immense potential to overtake the first digital currency and the crypto landscape in the future. Although Ethereum has some drawbacks around volatility and regulation, its greater technical capabilities can put ETH on the right path.
Both Ethereum and Bitcoin have significant roles in the future of cryptocurrencies, and we can only wait and see how both of them will function in 2024 and which one will dominate the market.