Recently conducted analysis shows that ERC-20 tokens issued on the Ethereum blockchain are now seemingly decoupling from it, meaning their price is no longer mirroring that of ether. Instead, the tokens are creating their own platforms and communities.
According to Santiment, a popular data analytics platform, there are 10 ERC-20 tokens decoupling from Ethereum, and two of them have recently been listed on the popular San Francisco-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase.
In its report, Santiment cites three ERC-20 tokens that have decoupled from Ethereum: the Basic Attention Token (BAT), 0x (ZRX), and Maker (MKR). These three cryptocurrencies have, due to various factors, seemingly stopped following ETH’s price, and are now “dancing to their own beat,” the report states.
In the image above, the blue line represents BAT’s price, while the purple one represents ZRX’s price compared to that of ETH, all against the US dollar. We can see that months ago the cryptocurrencies were seemingly following ETH’s trend line, but soon decoupled.
The BAT, as CryptoGlobe covered, surged last month after the Brave browser introduced a Chromium-based version of its software that’s reportedly 22% faster than the previous version. It also surged earlier this week, when Coinbase Pro revealed it was listing the token.
ZRX has also surged when Coinbase Pro announced it was listing it last month. The cryptocurrency, described as a “protocol that facilitates low friction peer-to-peer exchange of ERC20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain” on its whitepaper, forms the foundation of Paradex, a decentralized crypto exchange being integrated into Coinbase’s trading platform.
The MKR token has likely decoupled thanks to its popular product, the DAI stablecoin. It has become a widely adopted cryptocurrency, that’s seemingly starting to be used as the de-facto stablecoin on decentralized exchanges. It’s algorithmically dollar-pegged, and has seen its market cap increase in the last few years.
Given these developments, Ethereum’s ERC-20 tokens now have a market cap of $12.8 billion, little over 60% of the total market cap of Ethereum itself. Per Santiment, these crypto network “are done waiting for ETH to bounce back: they’re paving their own bull run.”
While the cryptos decoupled from ETH, this doesn’t mean the network is getting left behind. The firm’s analysis adds:
Logically this price movement should eventually find its way to ETH as well. A similar pattern happened in 2016-2017 when ETH launched the explosive bull run and BTC followed. But the market is irrational enough that we prefer to stay in the present moment. And at this moment… the price dynamics of some tokens are now decoupled.
Ethereum, as CryptoGlobe covered, is now down nearly 80% against bitcoin, the flagship cryptocurrency, since the “Flippening” – the scenario in which ETH becomes the number n crypto by market cap – seemed imminent.
