Crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe says the ETH/BTC ratio reached its bottom in April 2025 and has been moving in a pattern that closely resembles the 2019 cryptocurrency market cycle. He argues that several structural trends support a constructive outlook for Ethereum, including the rapid expansion of stablecoins, the growth of tokenized real world assets, and rising developer activity across the Ethereum ecosystem.

“The stablecoin supply on Ethereum has seen an increase of more than 65% in 2025. It's doubled since the peak in 2021,” he wrote in a Sunday X post.

Data from DefiLlama shows that total stablecoin capitalization on Ethereum now exceeds $163.9 billion, with roughly 52 percent of that value issued by Tether through its dollar-pegged USDT token. At the same time, Ethereum handled around $8 trillion in stablecoin transfer volume in the fourth quarter of 2024 alone, highlighting how central the network has become to global onchain payments.

Market sentiment and recent price behavior

Despite this activity, a contrarian narrative has recently taken hold among investors, with some claiming Ether is dead or losing relevance. That negative sentiment briefly coincided with ETH climbing to around $3,300 and breaking above its 365-day moving average, before the price pulled back.

This kind of pessimism during early upside attempts is often observed near market turning points, as skepticism tends to linger even while price and onchain data begin to improve.

ETH–BTC ratio reflects a familiar cycle

“ETH is called dead, as it has been trending downwards for four years against Bitcoin. However, since April 2025, it has bottomed out, and we're already in an Ethereum market,” van de Poppe said.

The ETH-BTC ratio, which measures Ethereum’s strength relative to Bitcoin, bottomed near 0.017 in April before rallying to a local peak of about 0.043 in August 2025. Following a broader crypto market sell-off in October, the ratio pulled back to around 0.034, where it was trading at the time of writing.

According to onchain analytics firm Santiment, current investor sentiment toward Ethereum closely resembles the emotional setups that have preceded previous major price recoveries, suggesting that the market may once again be positioned for a shift in trend.

Sources:

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/g7xkPkTa/?symbol=BINANCE%3AETHUSD

https://cointelegraph.com/news/eth-btc-bottom-april-mirror-2019-cycle

https://defillama.com/chain/ethereum?tvl=false&stablecoinsMcap=true

https://x.com/CryptoMichNL/status/2010345988335276370

https://x.com/CryptoMichNL/status/2010345984467874263

https://x.com/tokenterminal/status/2007923331526459855