Ether already ‘flippening’ Bitcoin, says Celsius CEO

Bitcoin (BTC), the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has already started losing its market dominance to Ether (ETH), according to Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky.

In a Monday interview with Kitco News, Mashinsky argued that the Ether “flippening,” or the hypothetical scenario in which Ether overtakes Bitcoin as the world’s most valued cryptocurrency, is already happening right now.

Mashinsky said that the flippening has already happened on Celsius. “We manage about $17 billion in deposits, or in customer coins, and the number one coin held in dollar terms is Ethereum,” he said.

Mashinsky also predicted that Ether will have completely surpassed Bitcoin in terms of market cap by 2022 or 2023:

“The flippening already happened. Ethereum already surpassed Bitcoin in dollar terms as the total holdings of the Celsius community, and I think that the broader market will follow it in the next year or two. We will see that flippening happening also in the broader market.”

Mashinsky went on to suggest that the main trigger for the upcoming flippening would be the difference between the key use cases of Bitcoin and Ether. According to the CEO, Bitcoin’s primary use case is the store of value, while Ether’s major use case is yield farming, the practice of staking or locking up crypto in return for rewards.

“Yield is an application that just has a broader user base. So I think over time you will see a broader adoption of Ethereum than of Bitcoin. But obviously both of them are exceptional applications and exceptional blockchains, and we will see a broad adoption of both, it’s just that one will exceed the other,” Mashinsky stated.

Launched in 2018, the Celsius Network is a decentralized lending and borrowing platform, allowing users to earn rewards by transferring their coins to the Celsius wallet and borrow dollars or stablecoins against their crypto collateral. The platform operates its own CEL token that is an ERC-20 coin running on the Ethereum network.

Related: Bitcoin’s active addresses fall below Ethereum’s after 60% drop in six weeks

Bitcoin has emerged as the world’s oldest digital currency and the most valued cryptocurrency, dominating altcoins like Ether in terms of the market cap. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, was launched in 2015 and has yet to overtake Bitcoin in terms of market value.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s share of the crypto market — also referred to as Bitcoin dominance — is 44.6%, while Ether’s stands at 18.5%, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

Mashinsky is not alone in thinking that Ether will flip Bitcoin in terms of value. Last week, Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Mike Novogratz also predicted that Ether could become the “biggest cryptocurrency one day.”