Bitcoin(CRYPTO: BTC) is down by 24% during the past 12 months, whereas Ethereum(CRYPTO: ETH) fell by 10% and Cardano(CRYPTO: ADA) declined by 71% in the same period. The biggest new driver of the coin’s scarcity and thus its price, spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), have attracted more than $1 billion in capital inflows since Feb. 17 alone. Furthermore, another new scarcity driver, accumulation in corporate treasuries, is still going strong; more than 190 public companies now hold the coin on their balance sheets. Those buyers are likely building semi-permanent allocations, and so their capital doesn’t come back onto the open market easily.
As usual, the coin’s supply keeps tightening due to its built-in mechanisms. About 95% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist has already been mined, and the next halving in 2028 will cut its newly mined issuance in half. None of this guarantees a quick recovery to its past heights. Still, Bitcoin’s ownership base has broadened so dramatically that the structural floor for its price is higher than in any previous decline, and that argues for it being a good purchase with $1,000 right now.
Ethereum’s battered price makes it easy to forget the chain holds $53 billion in total value locked (TVL), a metric that tracks the capital deposited in its decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. The entire DeFi segment is only worth $93 billion, so Ethereum’s lead is gargantuan. No rival is close, and it’s already making serious inroads into the next big domain for on-chain capital management. Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, which is the process of putting ownership records for bonds or stocks or other assets onto the blockchain, is flourishing on Ethereum; there are already more than $15 billion in RWAs that are tradable on the chain.
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