While the price of the flagship cryptocurrency bitcoin (BTC) has outperformed most other major digital assets this year after rising by little over 115%, Ethereum has quietly built a stronger base of long-term investors.
According to data from cryptocurrency analytics firm IntoTheBlock, the percentage of long-term ether holders has consistently outpaced that of bitcoin holders throughout 2024, in a noteworthy divergence given the price performance both assets saw over the last 12 months.
While bitcoin saw its price more than double over the year, despite the recent drawdown, ether is up less than 45% over the same period. The data shows that the proportion of long-term BTC holders has declined through the year to now stand at 62.3%, while that of long-term ETH holders edged up to now stand above 75%.
The trend comes at a time in which BTC is struggling to reclaim the $100,000 level, but is still far beyond its previous all-time high below $70,000 seen back in 2021. Meanwhile, ETH has failed to retake its previous all-time high this year and is trading at $3,400 after failing to remain above the $4,000 mark.
As reported, the supply of ether has dropped by around 0.02% over the past two years after the network’s merge with the Beacon Chain, which moved it to a Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm.
According to data from Ultrasound Money, a platform tracking Ethereum’s supply change, a total of 53,514.62 ETH has been burned since the network’s merge, meaning around $175.9 million worth of the second-largest digital asset by market capitalization has been burned since the upgrade over two years ago.
The current supply of ether is around 120.4 million ETH, and the network’s supply has been decreasing by 0.02% per year since the upgrade. Over the last 30 days, lower usage has meant the supply growth is of 0.31% for a year, with 947,000 ETH being issued per year and annualized burns equating to 575,000 ETH, the platform’s data shows.
Featured image via Pixabay.
