The world of cryptocurrency seems to be hitting new record-breaking milestones every other day. Things are changing so quickly that it has the reputation of being one of the most volatile markets there is.
There’s one thing that has always been a kind of unquestioned truth: that Bitcoin is King, but we may just see an upending of this long held truth as there appears to be a new challenger for the crown — Ethereum!
The Flippening
The Flippening, as it is being referred to by the cryptocurrency community, is still hypothetical at this stage but it is the event of an alternate coin overtaking Bitcoin as the cryptocurrency with the largest market cap. The Flippening has crypto enthusiasts buzzing, trying to predict when it will happen and what the consequences will be. It has even seen a website appear with all the data you need to watch Ethereum chase after Bitcoin.
Charting the decline of bitcoins market cap dominance. (data from CoinMarketCap)
Why Ethereum?
Ethereum has been sitting comfortably as the second most dominant coin since before the beginning of 2017, but that doesn’t mean things haven’t changed dramatically. In January of this year Ethereum’s Ether token, while sitting at number 2, was worth around $10AUD. Since then it has surged over 5000% to reach an all-time high of $545AUD on (13/06/2017) according to CoinMarketCap.
The incredible surge in price has been fuelled by various factors, one being that the entire cryptocurrency market received a huge boost in investor interest which allowed the whole market to more than double in value. Bitcoin itself managed to triple it’s price during this time. The other major contributing factor is that Ethereum is essentially a different technology that’s more than just a currency.
It’s a platform that can be built on top of by other developers, which leads to the Ethereum Network growing very quickly as other companies and startups get involved with it. Some examples are the development of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance, which is a group of Fortune 500 companies working with Ethereum developers to make it usable for enterprise level organisations.
The State of the Flippening (June 14 2017)
What will this mean for Bitcoin
While all of this may seem doom and gloom for Bitcoin, falling to second place by market cap doesn’t take away it’s potential. Bitcoin is still strides ahead of Ethereum in public awareness and real world usage. It’s possible that it’s just not suitable for every single project out there in the Crypto space at the moment.
I believe the biggest positive to come from The Flippening is that it is powering a shift towards a more balanced and competitive cryptocurrency industry, of which Bitcoin doesn’t need to be the only currency at the centre of attention. These are signs of the market starting to mature.