Ether's recent performance has seen the cryptocurrency outstrip bitcoin in terms of gains for two consecutive weeks — despite the latter's halving event.
According to Consensys, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has decided that ether is a security and said the agency has "trained its sights" on the firm's Metamask software. The news adds to growing fears of a possible rejection or, at the very least, a delay in approvals for spot ether exchange-traded funds .
The analysts further emphasized that this shift towards altcoins is evident in the recent decline in bitcoin dominance, which they mentioned historically tends to occur immediately after halving events. Data from TradingView charts showed that the bitcoin-Japanese yen pair on Japanese crypto exchange bitFlyer traded around a 0.2% premium to bitcoin’s dollar-denominated price on Coinbase.