price still struggling, no altseason on the horizon

The prezzo di Ethereum (ETH) still appears to be in clear difficulty. 

After climbing above $2,500 between Sunday and Monday, yesterday it fell to $2,000, with the risk of not even being able to hold this psychological threshold. 

Today it has slightly risen above $2,100, for now, but the risk of a break below $2,000 does not seem to be averted. 

The weakness of the Ethereum (ETH) price

The phase of strong weakness that the price of Ethereum is going through is very clear if its trend is analyzed starting from last year.

In fact, after the landing on the USA stock exchanges of the spot Bitcoin ETFs, in January 2024, the price of ETH was driven upwards by that of Bitcoin.

If in October 2023 ETH was still below $1,800, in just four and a half months it ended up rising by 130%, briefly surpassing $4,000. 

Since then, it has not yet managed to replicate similar performance. 

In fact, although in the first half of December 2024 it managed to climb back to at least $4,000, starting from the second half it embarked on a downward path that might not yet be finished. 

Already on December 20, it had fallen below $3,300, and on January 13, 2025, it had returned to $3,000. On February 2, it plummeted below $2,500, and since then it has not even managed to return to the psychological threshold of $3,000.

On February 25th, it broke below $2,500, and now it is dangerously close to $2,000. In the last three months, it has lost 45%, and it is currently at -55% from the highs of four years ago. 

The comparison between the price of Ethereum and that of Bitcoin

The confronto con Bitcoin is merciless. 

In fact, not only has BTC updated its all-time highs both in 2024 and 2025, but it is currently only -20% from the all-time highs recorded less than two months ago. 

Considering the price of Ethereum in Bitcoin, currently one ETH is worth about 0.025 BTC, but in 2024 it started from more than 0.060. 

Indeed, from this point of view, the decline has continued almost uninterrupted since September 2022, that is, since it transitioned from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS). At that time, one ETH was worth 0.084 BTC. 

Observing the chart related to the price of Ethereum in Bitcoin from then to today, a nearly continuous decreasing trend is noticeable that does not seem to have stopped yet. 

In particular, this trend seems to have accelerated starting from August 2024, and it did not stop even with Trump’s electoral victory in November. Just consider that at the end of October 2024, one ETH was still worth 0.035 BTC, and by the second half of November, it had already dropped to 0.032.

The dominance of Bitcoin

Analyzing the trend of the dominance of Bitcoin, however, it emerges that the difficulties of Ethereum are not linked to specific problems of this cryptocurrency, but to the growing strength of BTC in the crypto markets. 

In September 2022, Bitcoin’s dominance had fallen below 40%, partly due to Ethereum’s transition from PoW to PoS. 

Since then, it has started a long, almost constant climb culminating in the second half of November 2024 above 60%.

To tell the truth, in the second half of November, due to the so-called “Trump trade,” there was a mini-altseason, lasting about two weeks, during which many cryptocurrencies outperformed even Ethereum, in addition to Bitcoin.

In fact, the dominance of BTC had dropped to 55%, while the price of Ethereum in Bitcoin had only moved from 0.035 BTC to 0.039. 

However, once that brief mini-altseason ended, everything returned to normal, with Bitcoin’s dominance rising first to 59%, and then even to 62% at the beginning of February 2025. 

In fact, at the end of February, the crypto markets even entered Bitcoin season, the opposite of altcoin season, precisely because in recent weeks BTC has been draining capital from almost all altcoins, including Ethereum. 

The difficulties of the crypto markets

In light of all this, it cannot be stated that the weakness of Ethereum at this moment is a specific problem of its own. 

The real problem is the weakness of the entire altcoin sector, also and especially due to the notable strength of Bitcoin at this moment in the crypto markets. 

The point is that crypto markets often take refuge in BTC when things go wrong, and in fact, Bitcoin always outperforms altcoins during difficult times. 

Instead, altcoins tend to outperform BTC only when things are going particularly well, and only for limited periods. 

However, if in the last 12 months the price of Bitcoin has increased by 34%, while that of Ethereum has decreased by 36%, the so-called Total3 (the market capitalization of crypto excluding BTC, ETH, and stablecoins) has risen by 33%. 

So while the trend of Total3 has followed that of Bitcoin, Ethereum seems to have done the opposite, but this discrepancy is not due to what happened in the last four months, but to the sharp drop in ETH that occurred between July and August of last year, right around the time of the ETH listing on Ethereum spot. 

In other words, the only time Ethereum has clearly underperformed the crypto markets in the past year is when Grayscale liquidated the excess ETH it had accumulated for its fund, once transformed into an ETF.