During the first half of 2021, the ETH volume surged by more than 1,400% totaling $1.4 trillion, while BTC’s increased by 489%, reaching a total of $2.1 trillion.

ETH Beats BTC First Time

Coinbase took data from 20 trading venues and released a report, where it informed that Ether’s trading volume spiked by 1,461% during the first six months of 2021. Its total climbed to $1.4 trillion compared to $92 billion in the first half of 2020. In the meantime, Bitcoin marked an increase of 489%, and its trading volume hit $2.1 trillion.

The Coinbase report noted that

“Many of our largest institutional clients, including hedge funds, endowments, and corporates, increased or added first-time exposure to ETH in H1, believing the asset has long-term staying power tantamount to BTC’s while playing a differentiated role in their portfolios.”

The research also revealed the total market capitalization numbers for the first half of 2021. At the beginning of the year, the market started at $769 billion and surged to $2.4 trillion in May. It declined to $1.4 trillion at the end of that period.

The largest chunk of Bitcoin’s profits came during the first months of 2021 until April, when its price escalated towards an ATH. On the contrary, Ether saw the most of its earnings in May 2021, when it was worth more than $4,000.

Can Ethereum Become the Largest Cryptocurrency in the World?

The debate about whether Ether can surpass Bitcoin to become the most popular digital asset has been hot for the past few years.

At the beginning of May, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks – Mark Cuban – joined the argument and gave his three reasons why ETH will eventually outperform BTC: Ethereum’s network is capable of processing more transactions per second, and it is the platform where “the future of finance” is built. It has a higher usage rate than Bitcoin.

The prominent investor Mike Novogratz also gave his two cents on the matter. He suggested that Ether could surpass Bitcoin in a scenario where the network behind the second largest cryptocurrency is expanding rapidly. He did however outline the characteristics of both digital assets, stating that BTC is expected to be the digital equivalent of gold and ETH will serve different purposes.

“I think Ethereum may even become the biggest cryptocurrency one day but it will have a very different use case than BTC.”