Why Ethereum’s Price Lags Behind Despite Surging Real ETH Activity – The Shocking Truth
Ethereum’s network buzzes with activity—transactions soaring, DeFi thriving, NFTs minting. Yet its price? Stuck in first gear while rivals race ahead. What gives?
The Great ETH Paradox
On-chain metrics scream bullish: daily active addresses at record highs, gas fees spiking from demand, Layer 2s processing more transactions than Visa. But the charts whisper bearish—ETH trails Bitcoin’s rally and gets outpaced by speculative altcoins. Classic crypto disconnect.
Wall Street’s Ghost in the Machine
Maybe institutional traders still treat ETH like a tech stock—dumping at the first whiff of Fed rate hikes. Or perhaps the ‘ultrasound money’ narrative got drowned out by the latest memecoin circus. Either way, fundamentals haven’t caught up to the froth.
The Cynic’s Take: When Lambo?
Let’s face it—crypto markets reward hype over utility. Until ETH flips some arbitrary market cap threshold or gets another ETF tease, traders’ll keep chasing the next 100x shitcoin. The blockchain might be working overtime, but the moonboys want instant gratification.
ETH Market Slow, But Real Economy Is Expanding
The growth of Ethereum’s on-chain economy is significantly faster than the movement of its native asset price. Overall, the ethereum network has quietly entered a phase of significant real-world growth, as evidenced by soaring transaction revenues, surging stablecoin settlement volumes, and an accelerating ecosystem of decentralized apps.
This growing disparity between price and real economy was shared by Milk Road, a market expert on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). According to the market expert, the real economy of the underlying network has experienced a 3x growth faster than the price of ETH.
Data shared by Milk Road shows that the supply of stablecoins available on the Ethereum blockchain is up by 65.5x. Such a substantial growth implies that money only moves where activity is taking place, which is the clearest signal of actual demand in the broader crypto sector.
Meanwhile, Milk Road highlighted that ETH’s fully diluted market cap has increased by 21.6x over the same period. The discrepancy between Ethereum’s Core economic activity and its market value raises the possibility that investors are underestimating the network’s actual strength, which might lead to a realignment.
What this means is that the blockchain’s economic engine scaled far beyond its valuation for nearly 5 years. However, the expert noted that the difference between the supply of stablecoins and the completely diluted market cap won’t remain this large indefinitely if price ultimately catches up to activity, as it always does.
Fundamentals Remain Strong Amid Ethereum’s Weak Sentiment
Ethereum is still showcasing on-chain strength, hitting new milestones even in the ongoing market volatility. Leon Waidmann, the head of research at On-chain Foundation, disclosed that while prices are down, the blockchain-powered dollar economy recently reached a new all-time high.
For the first time ever, the overall value of all stablecoins that are secured on-chain pushed past $300 billion. Meanwhile, ETH LAYER 1 singlehandedly accumulates over $170 billion of the total supply, reflecting its growing adoption and rising dominance. Overall, sentiment around ETH, particularly towards its price action, may be weak, but its fundamentals remain robust.
In another X post, Waidmann stated that crypto players continue to declare that ETH is dead, while the blockchain keeps acting in the opposite direction. The network’s block space usage has been climbing nearly nonstop for the past 10 years.
Presently, the blockspace consumption has hit a new all-time high in 2025. According to Waidmann, this is beyond mere hype; it is driven by real economic activity settling on a global trust layer like Ethereum, as evidenced by the continuous growth of its fundamentals.
