Which will win Q3 2024?

The world's number one and two leading cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, daily trading volume, and crypto exchange volume from January 1 to mid-June are almost entirely tied to ROI.

By comparison, the S&P 500 index is up about 15% over the same period. But that's more than the broader stock market benchmark usually brings in a year.

So even in an unusually good two quarters for US stocks, Bitcoin and Ethereum delivered investors four times the ROI. In other words, Bitcoin broke the government's investment planning tool. one more time.

The average annual ROI for Bitcoin and Ethereum price performance since January 1 is aces. The top two cryptocurrencies are up +116% for the year.

That's such a high return that the compound interest calculator on Investor.gov won't even allow users to enter interest rates higher than 100%.

By the way—if you put $100 into the calculator every month for 15 years at an approximate interest rate of 15% (higher than the average for the S&P 500), you'll earn $68,815 over 15 years with daily compounding frequency. A total contribution of $18,100 to the national economy.

If you do the same exercise with the profit of Bitcoin or Ethereum, and enter only 99% for the interest rate – the result is a little different (more like a bajillion dollars).

The question is, which cryptocurrency will outperform the other in Q3, or will Bitcoin and Ethereum get incredibly close again in the middle of next year to generate the same amount of profit for crypto investors?

Here are six main things to consider. Some are for BTC, some for ETH, and some are a wash between the two blockchain network giants.

1. Fed Dollar Inflation (Benefits Bitcoin)

The center of gravity of the entire global financial system is the US Federal Reserve. For the Federal Reserve Bank, it represents the cost of borrowing money from the lender of last resort in the economy.

The Fed's interest rate adjusts dollar interest rates for loan products up the food chain to store credit cards and payday lenders. When it goes up or down, the rest of the financial economy goes with it.

But it's a big headwind that puts pressure on the prices of stocks and cryptocurrencies when it goes up. However, when it declines, there is a huge tailwind for investment products that puts significant pressure on their market value.

It looks like the US dollar will cut one interest rate later this year. “If it all goes as predicted, I think a rate cut at the end of the year would be reasonable,” Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker said Monday. After the Fed left rates unchanged for the seventh FOMC meeting last Wednesday, Investopedia reported:

“Last week's higher-than-expected inflation numbers signaled a sharp increase in expectations for further Federal Reserve rate cuts, but Fed officials themselves are treading cautiously.”

“What we're seeing is good growth in inflation, good levels of growth and a strong labor market,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said. “Ultimately, we think rates will have to come down to continue to support that. But they haven't needed it yet.”

Meanwhile, other central bank economies like the United Kingdom and South Korea are increasingly desperate to cut rates.

If not, when the Fed eventually starts trimming rates back again, it will be tailspin for crypto, but especially for Bitcoin – due to skewed tokennomics, the hard supply cap of only 21 million BTC tokens can ever be issued. in the blockchain network.

2. DeFi and DApps (Advantage Ethereum)

Bitcoin is like digital gold, but Ethereum is like the automotive economy of the 20th century because of the industrial revolution. Bitcoin is scarce in a digital world of cyber abundance.

A world without scarcity lacks something important. Meanwhile, Ethereum is a vehicle that brings together different sectors of the economy so that they can engage in modern financial markets.

MetaMask, Oasis App, MakerDAO and Uniswap usage statistics will continue in 2024 Wow. In February, MetaMask saw a 55% increase in users from 19 million to 30 million in four months.

The numbers are now the highest for MetaMask installs since 2022. The company behind the Ethereum wallet says those 30 million users manage 100 million accounts with MetaMask.

The Oasis app is a decentralized application (dApp) built on Ethereum. According to data hosted by BitDegree, the app's balance as of Thursday was worth $1,769,996,160 in market capitalization, and the dApp has made 308,620 transactions in the past 30 days (a 100 percent increase over the previous month).

Ethereum MakerDAO is one of the beefy, serious DeFi dApps making the Ethereum vision happen. The decentralized application's native cryptocurrency, the stablecoin DAI, is a small economy in itself, with a market capitalization of $5.4 billion this week.

Meanwhile, Uniswap continues to impress. The leading decentralized exchange (DEX) absolutely dominates other DEXs, with payouts totaling up to $100 million in the past 30-day period.

The only Web3 apps that generated more payment revenue last month were: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and Lido.

3. Institutional Adoption (Advantage Bitcoin)

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink talked in March about how the Bitcoin exchange-traded fund is the fastest-growing ETF in history.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says $IBIT spot #Bitcoin #ETF is fastest growing ETF in historypic.twitter.com/NOsDlFgROi

— Simon Dixon (@SimonDixonTwitt) March 27, 2024

Over every other cryptocurrency, Bitcoin and Ethereum both have an advantage when it comes to regulatory approval. But contrary to each other, Bitcoin still has a clear advantage going into Q3 2024. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow in and out of Washington-controlled Bitcoin ETFs every day.

Former US President Donald Trump is confident of introducing cryptocurrency to voters on the campaign trail. In the year Before the last presidential election in 2020, Trump said he was anti-Bitcoin and crypto.

That's a strong sign for institutional and mainstream crypto adoption of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Trump will soon want all Bitcoin to be produced in the United States and thinks it will help win the AI ​​arms race.

Meanwhile, VanEck announced on Thursday that it will launch the first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund in Australia.

4. Prague Electra (Pektra) Update: (Advantage Ethereum)

The Denkun upgrade – the most recent upgrade to Ethereum – was a huge boon for Ether's market value on crypto exchanges. Ether price went parabolic from January 24th buying the news until the correction on March 13th.

Ethereum devs plan to ship the Pectra update in early 2025, possibly Q4 2024, so this will be a bullish tailwind supporting the ETH price in the medium term.

Pectra is short for Prag-Electra modification.

Wall Street stock analysts at Tipranks recently praised Pectra's update in an article on Nasdaq, citing improved packages for the update and a new stake limit for ETH validators: 2,048 ETH.

5. Meme Coins (Benefits Ethereum)

Ethereum is still dominating meme coins, but the release of a fungible token on Bitcoin through the UTXO function using the technique of Runes and some big successes in Q2 – like Dog to the Moon (Runes) – shows that Bitcoin is a relevant player in this. niche as well.

According to data from Dune Analytics, in the Bitcoin Ordinals technique, BTC-minted NFTs are popular and traded between five and ten million dollars per day in June.

The Ethereum meme coin economy, however, is a multi-billion dollar risk that will continue to drive capital inflows into Web3 like the world is going crazy.

6. Competitive Analysis (Advantage Bitcoin)

The competitive landscape is a crucial factor in the horse race between BTC and ETH. These are By 2024, they are the farthest two cryptocurrencies in the world.

Ethereum is growing rapidly due to competition, but it has more competitors than Bitcoin. Market share in a competitive landscape is a real issue for this currency. Technology is not just a toy or platform; It's a business.

While BNB, Solana, Cardano, Avalanche, Aptos and a hundred others compete with Ethereum for DeFi market share, there is only one Bitcoin with 21 million BTC. Web 2.0 dons, Messrs. Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, both know that Web3's competition for those oranges is about to intensify.