Ethereum was close to flipping Bitcoin in 2017 — then never again
The Flippening was always a meme, but for a moment it wasn’t so funny
Nimoii/Shutterstock and Adobe modified by Blockworks
This is a segment from the Supply Shock newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.
Just one coin has ever come close to flipping bitcoin, around this time, eight years ago.
In June 2017, bitcoin was in the final stages of warming up for a historic push to nearly $20,000 by Christmas.
Altcoin prices were wacky. Bitcoin would be flat one week, while coins like BitShares would jump massively, by 250%. Others, like Stratis and DigiByte, were down up to 50% in the same period.
Ethereum, meanwhile, was poised for an explosion in token projects. One study calculated that $7 billion flowed into ICOs throughout 2017, practically all of it going to Ethereum-based projects. That was supposedly 4x more than the equity investments into crypto companies across the same period.
The price of ETH rose as investors piled into coin offerings through Ethereum’s native token. And on June 12, the market cap of ETH came within 17% of surpassing bitcoin’s: $36.8 billion to $44.3 billion.
Had bitcoin stayed flat, ETH would’ve only needed to jump from $400 to $470 to slide into the No. 1 spot.
This banger from the New York Time was published days earlier.
But it would never be: BTC and ETH both fell by 60% over the next month, preceding a 10x pump through the end of the bull market for BTC — but only a 9x for ETH. Ether never made the ground back.
Still, ether came much closer than the other two primary hopefuls ever did. Litecoin made it to 10% of bitcoin’s market cap in late November 2013, $11.8 million to $1.18 billion, while XRP reached more than half in May 2017, about a month before ether’s attempt.
By late June 2017, it was becoming clear the Flippening was no longer realistic.
These days, ETH sits at around 13% of bitcoin’s market value, with bitcoin dominance currently at almost two-thirds — its highest point since January 2021.
If there’s a status quo in crypto, it’s bitcoin.
Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:
- The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
- 0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.
- Empire: Crypto news and analysis to start your day.
- Forward Guidance: The intersection of crypto, macro and policy.
- The Drop: Apps, games, memes and more.
- Lightspeed: All things Solana.
- Supply Shock: Bitcoin, bitcoin, bitcoin.
