Investing.com - (Bitcoin), currently the world’s leading cryptocurrency, faces growing competition from ether, the digital currency linked to the (ethereum) blockchain.
After soaring over 300% in the last year, bitcoin is now trading at $2,300, which is still about 10 times the price of ethereum.
But ethereum's value could overtake Bitcoin’s by the end of 2018, said Olaf Carlson-Wee, chief executive officer of cryptocurrency hedge fund Polychain Capital, in an interview with Bloomberg.
Bitcoin currently dominates slightly less than half of the digital currency market, down from nearly 90% three months ago, according to Coinmarketcap.com data.
Meanwhile, ethereum has quadrupled its share and now represents over a quarter of the total digital currency market.
Supporters of ethereum believe it could become a globally accessible vehicle for running businesses as the technology allows more complex transactions in a shared, decentralized manner.
"What we’ve seen in ethereum is a much richer, organic developer ecosystem develop very, very quickly,” Carlson-Wee told Bloomberg Television.
Fred Wilson, co-founder and managing partner at Union Square (NYSE:SQ) Ventures, is even more upbeat about the future of the alternative cryptocurrency.
"The market cap of ethereum will bypass the market cap of Bitcoin by the end of the year," Wilson said in an earlier interview with Bloomberg.