Ethereum Holders Are More Willing Than Bitcoin Investors to Part With Coins: Glassnode

In brief

• ETH holders move, sell, and spend their digital coins more than BTC investors, Glassnode data shows.
• This is because the Ethereum network powers crypto applications, which use ETH as gas fees.
• Bitcoin holders, on the other hand, tend to keep their coins in storage and treat BTC as “digital gold.”

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Bitcoin holders are still the true “diamond hands” investors compared to Ethereum buyers, according to a new report, with the latter coins being moved and spent far more than the original so-called digital gold.

Blockchain data firm Glassnode said in a new report—citing data collected before this week’s crypto crash—that BTC moves less frequently than ETH, behaving more like a “digital savings asset.”

ETH moves far more as it functions as “digital oil,” which is both stockpiled and actively used as network fuel and collateral.

“Bitcoin behaves like the digital savings asset it was designed to be, in that coins are largely hoarded, turnover is low, and recent behavior shows that more supply is migrating into long-term hold wrappers rather than sitting on exchanges,” the report said.

“Ethereum’s behavior also reflects the inherent properties of a high transaction smart contract platform,” it added, “with a large anchored base from native staking, with the addition of recent market forces adding an investor component through ETFs.”

The report goes on to note why: Ethereum’s use in smart contracts, which hold the code that powers a wide array of decentralized applications, DeFi platforms, and tokenized assets.

As Glassnode notes, “ETH’s long-term holders are mobilizing their old coins at a rate that’s 3x faster than BTC’s long-term holders, signaling ETH’s long-term holders are more willing to part with their coins, pointing to utility-driven behavior.”

Ethereum powers crypto applications, ranging from stablecoins to decentralized finance exchanges. To make transactions sending digital dollars or to swap tokens on a decentralized crypto exchange, users need to pay gas fees in ETH.

It is because of the Ethereum network’s use cases that, despite the approval of exchange-traded funds now trading on traditional stock exchanges, ETH still works less like a store-of-value asset compared to BTC—and that the coins are less dormant.

Still, ETH still can have store-of-value use cases, Glassnode noted, explaining that “one out of every four ETH is locked in native staking and ETFs.”

Ethereum’s price recently stood at nearly $3,208, down 4.5% over the past week. The coin was slow in reaching an all-time high but finally did so in August, breaking a nearly four-year-old record. It has traded well below that level—$4,946—in recent weeks.

Bitcoin was recently trading at $95,992, falling by nearly 6% over the past seven days. The coin’s all-time high stands at $126,088, touched in October.