What is the Flippening?

“The Flippening” refers to the possible future event when Ethereum overtakes Bitcoin to become the most valuable cryptocurrency in terms of market capitalization.

Until recently, Bitcoin has held the top spot without any serious competition since its creation in 2009. On February 24th, 2017, Bitcoin’s market capitalization represented 86.74% of the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies.

Since then, even though its price per coin has risen drastically, Bitcoin’s market share has fallen compared to its share against the rest of the crypto market and now stands below 60%. At the same time, other cryptocurrencies, especially Ethereum, have rapidly gained market share.

Several metrics measure the usefulness, value, or importance of a cryptocurrency. But when most people talk about the “flippening” taking place, they are usually referring to Ethereum overtaking Bitcoin in market capitalization specifically.

Trading Volume & Mining Reward

Our chart also measures the Flippening in terms of trading volume. Bitcoin is used more as a base currency for crypto traders, so Ethereum's share of that is much less than its share of market cap.

Our chart once measured mining rewards. However, in September 2022, Ethereum switched to proof of stake. This means that miners cannot mine ETH using ASICs. ETH's switch to proof of stake (PoS) changed its security model. A large mining reward means there is more incentive for miners to invest in machines and secure the network. However, now that ETH does not have ASIC miners but only stakers, its reward is much lower and will likely stay much lower.

Ethereum vs Bitcoin

At the end of the day, Ethereum and Bitcoin are aiming to be two very different things. Ethereum is trying to be a network that supports many other coins and uses cases besides money. Bitcoin's main feature is maintaining its 21 million supply cap limit. As it stands, there is no reason to compare Bitcoin and Ethereum as competitors because they have two different goals.