Bitcoin’s main crypto rival Ethereum celebrated its fifth birthday on Wednesday and Ether surprised many investors by moving above $300.

However, compared to Bitcoin, the biggest altcoin is underperforming.

Data from on-chain monitoring brand Skew shows that ETH/USD as a percentage of BTC/USD remains far below its all-time highs.

“As of Ethereum’s birthday, Ether’s share stood at 3.1% of the BTC price. At its peak in January 2018, the figure was 11%,” reported Coin Telegraph.

“Since the altcoin boom over two years ago, Ether has failed to reclaim much of its lost ground as Bitcoin took over the broader cryptocurrency market cap.”

That said, another metric - total number of addresses created in the first five years on both major blockchain networks - suggests that the adoption of Ether is moving faster than that of Bitcoin.

Established by Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood in 2015, Ethereum serves as the platform for over 260,000 different cryptocurrencies, including 47 of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalisation.  Ether is the cryptocurrency generated by Ethereum miners as a reward for computations performed to secure the blockchain.

Ethereum is currently developing and planning to implement a series of upgrades called Ethereum 2.0. Current specifications for Ethereum 2.0 include a transition to proof of stake and an increase in transaction throughput. 

The recent ETH price analysis in the Crypto Research Report predicted that Ethereum might reach $331 in 2020. It uses the ‘equation of exchange’ model, which studies all the possible use cases for cryptocurrencies and makes assumptions about changes in supply and demand.