Ether is going to shine again, Steno research says

Ether's (ETH) recent bout of underperformance may be over and the world's second largest cryptocurrency could be ready to shine again, both in fiat terms and relative to bitcoin (BTC), Steno Research said in a report on Thursday.

The native token of the Ethereum blockchain has risen nearly 8% year-to-date, while bitcoin has surged 43% and the CoinDesk 20 index (CD20) has gained nearly 11%.

Ether's performance in the last bull market could provide some guidance. ETH surged during the last altcoin season, and in under two months it more than doubled in value compared to bitcoin, the report noted.

This shift was sparked by a surge in onchain activity, the report said, including decentralized finance (DeFi), stablecoin issuance, and the boom in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), all of which happened mainly on the Ethereum blockchain.

The Federal Reserve interest rate cut, earlier this week, will result in increased onchain activity, which will strongly benefit Ethereum, Steno said.

Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are unlikely to continue outperforming ether versions as much, Steno said, noting that ETH has shown its ability to suddenly outperform its larger rival in the past.

There have been three main reasons for bitcoin's recent outperformance over ether. "The impact of U.S. spot ETFs for both bitcoin and ether, the persistent buying pressure from MicroStrategy (MSTR), and a notable decline in Ethereum's transactional revenue in recent months," analyst Mads Eberhardt wrote.

"Ethereum's active addresses remain strong, particularly when factoring in the growing adoption of rollups," Eberhardt wrote, adding that the network's transactional revenue looks to have bottomed in August.

Asset manager Bitwise is also bullish about ether's prospects. The cryptocurrency is potentially a contrarian bet into the year-end, it said in a report on Tuesday.