Since its inception, Ethereum has been constantly compared to Bitcoin, with the former being praised as a better option to the latter in some cases. As the years have passed, the competition has become even fiercer, especially with ETH growing rapidly. Ultimately, Ethereum appears to be overtaking Bitcoin, especially in terms of active addresses.
Ethereum active addresses surpass Bitcoin
On-chain data tracker Santiment will be launched on Thursday, September 14 revealed a surprising update on the fierce rivalry between Bitcoin and Ethereum. In the X-post, the tracker revealed that the number of unique addresses traded on the network had reached the second highest daily figure of all time.
While this is important for the blockchain alone, it is also important in terms of the competition between the two largest assets in the space. To put this into perspective, Santiment’s reported figure of 1,089,893 puts Ethereum above Bitcoin in this area alone.
The last time daily unique active addresses on the network hit a new all-time high was in December 2022. So it’s been almost a year since the value was this high, suggesting there’s a unique driving factor behind it.
This report also matches Artemis Terminal’s report showing that Ethereum was just ahead of Bitcoin in terms of daily active addresses.
ETH active addresses surpass BTC on Wednesday | Source: Artemis Terminal
Artemis reports that Ethereum saw a total of 1.03 million daily addresses on September 13, compared to Bitcoin’s 743,800 addresses during the same period. However, this figure has since pulled back and Bitcoin pulled ahead of Ethereum again as of September 14.
What does this mean?
While Ethereum’s rise on Wednesday was impressive, it doesn’t mean much as the network has been unable to sustain its growth. Also, the increase can easily be explained by the rise in popularity of the Friend.Tech decentralized financial social media platform based on the Ethereum blockchain.
Friend.Tech had seemingly come back from the dead, hitting a new record in the number of daily users. Since an ETH address is required to participate in the platform, it is no surprise that there was an increase in the number of ETH addresses active on the network.
The spike in the number of daily active addresses also appears to have had little impact on the price of the cryptocurrency itself. ETH’s price is still struggling to stay above $1,600, with small gains of 0.35% in the past day and losses of 1.15% in the past week.
ETH price still holding above $1,600 | Source: ETHUSD on Tradingview.com