Bitcoin vs Ethereum: Could the Flippening Really Happen?


$112K: The Key for Medium Term Price Action

Bitcoin’s recent weakness and Ethereum’s new All-Time High (ATH) at $4,958 brought back talks about “The Flippening”, a term first coined back in 2017. After Bitcoin’s own ATH at $124,500, reached on August 14, buyers seemed to abandon the OG coin in favour of its younger brother, Ethereum. This was also evidenced by spot ETFs, which showed an unusual behavior, with ETH ETF inflows widely outpacing BTC ETF inflows during the entire week.

On Wednesday, Ethereum ETFs experienced combined inflows of $307 million, while Bitcoin ETFs only saw around $81 million in inflows. Leading the ETH pack was BlackRock’s ETHA, with $262 million in inflows. In second place and trailing quite far away was Fidelity’s FETH with $20.5 million in inflows.

Since August 21, spot ETH ETF inflows amounted to over $1.8 billion, while Bitcoin ETFs brought in just $171 million, according to data from Coinglass.

This discrepancy brought back talks about The Flippening, which is basically a potential event where Ethereum surpasses Bitcoin in market capitalization. The difference is huge at this time, with ETH’s market cap sitting around $554 billion, while Bitcoin leads the pack with $2.24 trillion.

The term “flippening” refers to the total market value, not to price per coin. Considering that Bitcoin’s supply is 21 million coins and Ethereum does not have a maximum supply, it is not impossible to see such a flippening at a future time. But given the current huge gap, this event is likely far, far away.

Chart Analysis – BTC/USD

In recent months, the level at $112,000 has been getting more and more recognition. It first became an All-Time High on May 22, then it was broken to the upside on July 10 and provided support on August 2. Bitcoin then spent 3 days in close vicinity to the level, starting on August 20, and it looked like we would see another strong bullish move off it.

But on August 25, the bears managed to break below $112K for the first time since July 10, and it looked like Bitcoin was in for a deeper correction. While such a correction is not out of the question yet, the bulls seem to have found new strength, and much of it was generated after the bounce off the long-term bullish trend line seen on the chart.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is attempting to establish itself above the crucial level at $112K once again. If this is the case, we can consider the bearish break a false one, and usually, false breaks are followed by strong moves to the opposite side. The next bullish target will be the upper Bollinger Band, but there is still a hurdle at $116K – $116.5K. Keep in mind that today’s PCE release may shift the probability of a rate cut in September, which would affect the crypto market.