ETH Holders in Panic: What’s Behind Ethereum’s Decline and Rising Interest in SOL?

Panic among ETH holders? 😰

$SOL to $ETH is breaking all-time highs. $ETH relative to $BTC has dropped to its lowest level since April 2021.

What’s happening with Ethereum, and why the panic?

The reason is simple: inflated expectations. Everyone expected the DeFi sector and staking protocols to drive ecosystem growth, and for an Ethereum ETF to attract more investors. There were also high hopes regarding Ethereum's deflation, with expectations that network activity would burn more ETH than is produced.

But what are we seeing?

There is money in DeFi, but it’s not moving, so it doesn’t provide value to the chain. Everyone was hoping for a "DeFi summer," but it didn’t happen again. Instead, we got a "memecoin summer," but even here, Ethereum got nothing, as 90% of the meme community is on Solana.

ETH holders, seeing SOL hit new highs every week, naturally start to worry and panic. "Why am I holding my bags in ETH when even Bitcoin is yielding better returns?" This further intensifies the negative sentiment, and instead of the expected growth, we’re watching the price continue to decline.

But there’s a silver lining — an attractive value proposition relative to other assets. If, for example, you have a lot of Solana or other assets in your portfolio that are currently outperforming ETH, this could be a good opportunity to test and partially transfer into ETH. Especially considering ETH is often needed for various activities like staking, restaking, etc.