Advertisement
Canada markets open in 4 hours 54 minutes
  • S&P/TSX

    22,107.08
    +194.56 (+0.89%)
     
  • S&P 500

    5,248.49
    +44.91 (+0.86%)
     
  • DOW

    39,760.08
    +477.75 (+1.22%)
     
  • CAD/USD

    0.7352
    -0.0021 (-0.28%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    81.82
    +0.47 (+0.58%)
     
  • Bitcoin CAD

    96,023.50
    +1,008.62 (+1.06%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,215.10
    +2.40 (+0.11%)
     
  • RUSSELL 2000

    2,114.35
    +44.19 (+2.13%)
     
  • 10-Yr Bond

    4.1960
    0.0000 (0.00%)
     
  • NASDAQ futures

    18,491.50
    -12.25 (-0.07%)
     
  • VOLATILITY

    12.97
    +0.19 (+1.49%)
     
  • FTSE

    7,949.93
    +17.95 (+0.23%)
     
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,168.07
    -594.66 (-1.46%)
     
  • CAD/EUR

    0.6809
    +0.0004 (+0.06%)
     

Crypto: Grayscale unveils new trust invested in ether rival solana

Yahoo Finance's Zack Guzman and Jared Blikre discuss how Ether has outperformed Bitcoin.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. In today's Crypto Corner, I want to dig into a little bit deeper here, Jared, the performance, and I should say outperformance, by Ethereum in 2021 versus Bitcoin, now at its widest ever margin, as it flirts with yet another all-time high here. Bitcoin still pretty far off the last all-time high we saw there, north of that $65,000 mark. But if you're in, very close, a stone's throw, dare I say a coin's throw, Jared, away from that all-time high.

When you look at as to why, we've been talking a lot about why Ethereum has really run up and the explosion of DeFi here and the fact that you have to use Ethereum and the fact that it's getting burnt now by some of these platform changes in each transaction. So when we talk about NFTs exploding and the gas fees and minting these things, basically, Ethereum becoming disinflationary as that goes on, contributing to the scarcity of it. And then attached to that, the price goes up. So I mean, there's a lot there to chat, but I mean, I guess, some people are looking at this outperformance as another signal that all the other altcoins beyond Ethereum might start to really catch fire here in relation to Bitcoin.

ADVERTISEMENT

JARED BLIKRE: Well, Shiba Inu has been on fire as well. And let's chart all this because I have a two-month candlestick chart of Ethereum here, of Ether, and we can see it's testing these highs. It's-- what did you say-- a coin's throw. I like that. Maybe a token's throw or a smart contract's throw. Anyway, you get the point, right back up there. And you take a look at Bitcoin over the same period. That's pretty lackluster performance. So I've been pretty short-term bearish on Bitcoin technicals lately. You take a look at the longer term picture. It looks a bit better.

But, you know, these breakouts that we've seen in Bitcoin to higher highs, to record highs haven't been rewarded with that surge, those surges that we've seen in the past. I mean, you take a look at the last two years' price action, and we've had some really big surges. We had one here in late 2020 that led to this consolidation. We had all this turmoil in here. We'll have to see what comes of this. But it looks like the other tokens and coins and what have you are, indeed, picking up. I'm going to put on an equal weight chart. And this is one day's performance. And you can see some big outperformance here. This is Polygon. That is up, let's see, 15% today.

But I want to take a look at what's happened over the last five days because this has been concurrent with that run-up that we've seen in Ether. And let's see where Bitcoin is in the mix here. It's right about in the middle, 7 and 1/2% over that time period. But I do think this portends the future of crypto because we just got, I think it was a Grayscale Solano trust. Yes, that just went live. And so investors who are accredited can now use an ETF to invest in Solano. And Solano is an Ether, Ethereum competitor.

So, Zack, I think no matter what happens with the price of Bitcoin, we know that crypto is here to stay. It's just a function of pricing. And I think the demand for Ether is very instructive versus the lack of demand for Bitcoin.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah, I mean, when you talk about the Solana trust there from Grayscale, you know, it's now the 16th product they have out there. And it's an interesting one because when we saw earlier, you know, it may not have been as easy to access some of these crypto projects, maybe some of them weren't on even the radar of some of the investors, certainly not the people who watch our show, but as we've been talking more and more about them, I mean, Solana is on Coinbase right now. You can go out and get them. And we've always kind of debated the upside of getting access to these cryptos via the trust that Grayscale offers or just holding them outright.

And I guess there are some tax worthy implications here in owning shares in the trust versus owning these outright. You sell them, you got to deal with kind of short-term capital gains, long-term capital gains. It's different when you look at crypto and owning that specifically. So, I mean, I guess there are those questions that investors would need to answer here. But to your broader point, Jared, as to where pricing goes, it's been Solana that's been the standout here in 2021. Avalanche as well, one of those other L1 competitors.

Keep in mind when I say L1, these other blockchains that are vying for market share against Ethereum with lower gas fees, higher transaction times, quicker transaction times, I should say, in trying to offer some of these things. And we've seen them dabble with NFTs. But you do wonder, if we are in the early stages, what else is going to be built on these networks? What else will you need quick transaction times for when we're talking about tokenized securities? Instead of buying shares in companies, you buy tokens corresponding to those shares. It's endless possibilities here, Jared. So, I mean, you do wonder what's going to be built, but you understand why. We've seen Solana's price explode more than 11,000% here in 2021.

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah, I just want to show the YFi Interactive one more time here. I have a year-to-date heatmap of all our cryptocurrency tokens-- not all of them, but just a selection here. And Dogecoin taking the cake here, Zack, up 3,700%. I also want to mention, as far as the retail investor, there was a filing made the other day for an Ethereum ETF. And the consensus on the Street or the analyst's view is that it has a low probability of coming forward just because of Gensler's not hostility, but concerns, trepidation, with respect to these vehicles. Even though it would be based on the futures, people I talked to just don't think it's coming to market. So, on the regulatory side, you still have a little bit of a headwind here.