The boom in decentralised financing (DeFi) in the third quarter caused the Ethereum network (ETH) to process more than twice a day the volume of Bitcoin (BTC) transactions.
According to Messari's market data aggregator crypto, the 30-day moving average for Ethereum's trading volume is currently $7 billion and Bitcoin processes less than $3 billion.
If the current trend continues, Messari predicts that Ethereum will become the first public blockchain to settle 1 trillion dollars in transfers per calendar year.
The previous strongest calendar year for Ethereum compared to Bitcoin was 2018, when it processed half a billion dollars, 59% more than Bitcoin 849 million dollars this year.
Bitcoin is currently in its second strongest year after 2018, with an expected 800 million dollars processed.
However, this is not an easy comparison between the two blockchain. Since the DeFi bubble is largely based on smart contracts powered by Ethereum, the Ethereum network currently processes the volume of the entire sector, while Bitcoin largely represents BTC value transfers.
Messari's Ryan Watkins attributes a large part of the Ethereum volume growth to the increased ERC-20 stablecoin volumes, with the majority of Tether transactions (USDT) currently taking place on the Ethereum and the demand driven by agriculture increasing supply by over 600% for the stable DAI MakerDAO.
Watkins also notes an increase in liquidity on the chains of decentralized exchanges (DEX), where Uniswap and Curve generated more than $20 billion in volume in September. DEXs now account for more than 13.6% of total exchange volume.
