Ethereum, WETH Now Settling More Value Than Bitcoin

Ethereum long trailed Bitcoin as the top blockchain network for transferring value, but those days could be in the past as ETH and WETH transactions have surpassed Bitcoin and begun to pull away in recent weeks.

Average daily transaction value of ETH and Wrapped ETH (WETH) over the last 30 days has grown to more than $13 billion compared to just over $9 billion for Bitcoin, according to data compiled by Money Movers and provided by CoinMetrics. (At one point, ETH alone briefly surpassed Bitcoin.)

Ethereum value transfers began outpacing Bitcoin on January 24 and have been extending that lead ever since, now settling over 40% more value per day on average. It’s another indication that Ethereum could have a leg up on Bitcoin as a functional digital currency suited to the everyday needs of casual users and hardcore traders alike.

Wrapped Ethereum allows the value of native ETH tokens to be traded alongside other ERC-20 tokens that are built on the Ethereum protocol. Ether tokens came before the introduction of the ERC-20 standard, so WETH was developed as a straightforward way to use the value of the native ETH tokens on the flourishing network they helped create. But the value of transactions made in WETH or native ETH are effectively identical, as both are methods of using Ethereum to send value from one place to another.

Adding the value of transactions via dollar-pegged stablecoins USDC and DAI to the Ethereum network increases the gap even further, with nearly 80% more dollar-denominated value being transferred compared to Bitcoin over the last 30 days. 

It’s a testament to the growing promise of a Turing-complete blockchain such as Ethereum to process large transactions without intermediaries such as banks. The network can leverage the strength of dollar-pegged stablecoins and a suite of innovative ERC-20 tokens offering new financial primitives like governance tokens or liquidity provider pools.

Even without WETH, stablecoins, or any of the thousands of ERC-20 tokens being traded daily, value transfer from native ETH transactions is nearly equivalent to Bitcoin (about 90%) over the last 30 days. Compare that to a year ago, when native ETH was seeing just 13% the value traffic of Bitcoin, and it’s easy to see how much things have changed. Perhaps one year from now, we could be looking at a new king in the crypto economy.