CoinMarketCap Academy<\/a>\u00a0and other outlets, JPMorgan analysts led by managing director Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou argue that Ethereum (ETH) and the broader altcoin market \u201cmay continue to underperform Bitcoin (BTC)\u201d unless there is \u201cmeaningful improvement\u201d in network activity, decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption and real\u2011world applications. The bank traces the current divergence back to the October 2025 deleveraging, when a sharp, geopolitics\u2011driven selloff triggered heavy liquidations in ETH products relative to BTC, particularly among systematic and crypto\u2011native traders. While markets have since stabilized, the analysts say ETH has failed to fully regain lost ground either in price terms or in key institutional flow metrics.<\/p>\nJPMorgan highlights spot ETF flows as one of the clearest signs of that gap. The bank estimates that spot Bitcoin ETFs have now recovered roughly two\u2011thirds of the outflows they suffered during the October 2025 drawdown, while spot ether ETFs have only clawed back about one\u2011third of their redemptions over the same period. Futures positioning at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) tells a similar story: institutional Bitcoin exposure on regulated futures has \u201cnearly fully restored\u201d to pre\u2011selloff levels, but ETH futures open interest and net long positioning remain well below earlier peaks. Momentum\u2011driven players such as commodity trading advisors and quant funds are described as \u201cslightly underweight\u201d both assets, but the underweight is more pronounced in ETH, reflecting the heavier deleveraging it endured last October.<\/p>\n
Beyond flows, JPMorgan points to fundamentals. The note argues that, despite a series of Ethereum upgrades over the past three years, the network has not produced \u201cmeaningful\u201d growth in on\u2011chain activity: DeFi volumes have plateaued, total value locked remains below cycle highs, and user counts and transaction fees have not shown the kind of sustained expansion that would justify a sharp re\u2011rating versus Bitcoin. Lower base\u2011layer fees have also reduced ETH token burns under EIP\u20111559, contributing to faster net supply growth and weakening one of the core \u201cultra\u2011sound money\u201d narratives that once differentiated Ethereum from other smart\u2011contract platforms.<\/p>\n
For altcoins more broadly, the bank cites thinner liquidity, lower order\u2011book depth and a string of security incidents as factors weighing on sentiment and discouraging fresh institutional capital. \u201cAll these factors have eroded confidence in the broader altcoin ecosystem and discouraged the deployment of fresh capital,\u201d the analysts write, adding that Bitcoin has benefited from a perception as the \u201csafer\u201d macro and regulatory bet within the crypto complex. Earlier JPMorgan work this year already framed BTC as the \u201cclear winner\u201d in terms of ETF resilience and institutional positioning, noting that Bitcoin products have held net inflows even as some gold and silver funds bled assets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The implication of the latest note is stark: upgrades alone will not rescue ETH\u2019s relative trade. Unless Ethereum can reignite on\u2011chain activity\u2014particularly in DeFi, real\u2011world assets and other non\u2011speculative use cases\u2014and demonstrate that those flows translate into fee revenue and token demand, JPMorgan expects Bitcoin to keep leading both on price performance and in capturing the next leg of institutional inflows.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ethereum\u2019s slide behind Bitcoin is no longer just a price story; JPMorgan says the institutional plumbing now confirms that BTC has pulled decisively ahead on flows, leaving ETH and the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29114"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29115,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29114\/revisions\/29115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}