Ethereum Hits 22-Month High As Bybit Says Institutions Now Favor ETH Over Bitcoin

Updated: 27 February 2024

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The Ethereum price soared to a 22-month high as a new Bybit Research report said institutional investors are favoring the altcoin leader over Bitcoin (BTC).

ETH jumped more than 6% over the past 24 hours to trade at $3,262.08 as of 6:15 a.m. EST as the report said there’s been a significant shift in investor sentiment since December.

The report says that in January institutional investors allocated 39.82% of their holdings to ETH, while 39.49% was allocated to Bitcoin.

Historical Shift Towards Ethereum

While the difference is small, it marks a historical shift away from BTC, which had previously been strongly favored, towards the second biggest crypto by market cap, ETH. The upcoming Dencun upgrade was cited as one likely reason behind the change.

“Dencun is set for launch in March 2024, which helps reduce the transaction cost on Layer 2s with a method called `proto-dank sharding,”’ it said. “The potential successful implementation will likely bring a tailwind to Ethereum and other Layer 2 tokens.”

#Ethereum is on the verge of its Dencun Upgrade!

📈 Which projects will benefit from this upgrade?

Find out now 👇 #TrendingSectorAlert pic.twitter.com/whwareHxQ3

— Bitget (@bitgetglobal) February 27, 2024

ETH’s deflationary supply, coupled with its low supply on exchange platforms and increased staking activity, has also enabled the altcoin to outperform BTC with a 33% rally year-to-date, the report said.

Investors Ditch Altcoins

Despite the bullish outlook on ETH, the rest of the altcoin market has not been able to keep investors interested. Bybit said that institutions have decreased their exposure to smaller-cap altcoin categories such as meme coins, artificial intelligence and BRC-20 tokens despite the impressive returns these cryptos posted in 2023.

Instead, institutional investors have shifted their attention to assets with higher degrees of stability. These more stable asset classes include layer-1 tokens as well as decentralized finance protocols.

Bybit’s research also suggests that neither retail nor institutional investors are very taken by Solana (SOL), even after it erased many of the losses suffered during the past bear cycle.

Both retail and institutional investors have been taking profits since SOL recovered back to $40 and after it held a dominant position in both portfolios back in the third quarter of last year.

As of the end of January, SOL accounted for only a single digit of the overall portfolio of institutions, it said.

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