BTC and ETH – New Age Gold and Silver?

While ETH has a long way to go before surpassing the market cap of global silver, it has managed to become the first of the alt-coins to take the fight against Bitcoin. Here is the real reason why Ethereum has become known as the new silver. Like traditional silver, Ethereum already offers more “industrial applications” than does the “gold” of cryptocurrencies Bitcoin.

Ethereum’s network application has made huge promises that it is already delivering on for digital “industrial” applications - by making it cheaper and easier for developers to create dApps. It is not simply a virtual currency like Bitcoin. Ethereum offers a viable and already proven means of developing smart contracts. These are pre-programmed transactions and online markets that can automatically transact as the coded blockchain conditions become met. This also means there are no limits to what the Ethereum chain can do in theory – it's completely up to how coders apply the technology to existing and developing use cases.

Consider the actual digital "industrial" applications for the new silver that are already working. Ethereum blockchain code-based programs allow for sports betting, customers to pay for and manage their electricity, and farmers to sell their produce directly to the end-user consumers. Beyond this, the majority of international banks have already shown a real interest in using the Ethereum code to create programs for faster money transfers and trading by creating a digital currency – called Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC’s).

Additionally, the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, led by JP Morgan Chase have combined their reputations and prowess to form an Ethereum trade association. Microsoft Business Development and Strategy Director Marley Gray summed up their collective thinking best with the statement:

“Ethereum is a general platform where you can solve problems in many industries using a fairly elegant solution— the most elegant solution we have seen to date.”

As a concrete example of the new digital “industrial” applications, JP Morgan has already developed its own Ethereum-based tool they call Masala. It permits some of their proprietary databases to interact back and forth with Ethereum blockchains. A number of the largest names in technology such as Microsoft, Intel, and IBM are also looking at their own uses for Ether.

Just take a look at the incredible number of companies (many of them industry-leading) that are signed on and committed to seeing Ethereum succeed as part of the EEA. Among them are JP Morgan, Microsoft, Intel, BP, ING, Credit Suisse, Santander, and so many more.

Looking at these countless industries which are finding uses for Ethereum and digital silver Ether tokens, it really is eerily very much like traditional silver and the hundreds of applications of the precious metal.

So, the question becomes; can Ethereum flip Bitcoin to become the largest crypto instead of being the “little brother” as silver is to gold?

Although Ethereum is the world's largest altcoin, its market cap is just over $380 billion US. At the time of writing, that of BTC’s was over $1 trillion US. While that is a huge gap, this is expected by some experts to be bridged soon thanks to the fact that analytics show that a large number of investors are underexposed to Ethereum.

With a surge in institutional adoption expected on the back of major banks taking an interest in the blockchain, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that ETH and overtake BTC.

What’s more, ETH has already flipped BTC on the question of transaction count, with the metric of transaction volume doing the same quite a few times over the past few months too. Other metrics such as trading volume and active addresses have risen too.

Whether or not Ethereum overtakes Bitcoin as the largest cryptocurrency by market cap it’s important to remember the differences between the two – Bitcoin being the new age store of value and Ethereum being utilised for industrial purposes. If you were to base your prediction on what the gold and silver markets have done over the years, then you’d believe Bitcoin will be the dominant crypto. Just remember that Bitcoin and Ethereum have the potential to dominate the financial world as we progress into the digital future and their use cases can evolve.