The last few weeks have seen the ETH:BTC ratio slip, and people in /r/ethfinance have been getting upset about the Flippening getting further and further away.
But why should we ethfinanciers collectively care?
Bitcoin is obviously the grandpa and "gold standard" in crypto, but it also serves a very different use case (immutable, monolithic, and static store of value based on PoW) than Ethereum (a programmatic, composable, and yield-generating settlement ecosystem based on PoS).
We've been lamenting the high degree of correlation among assets within the crypto world for years. Yet, hoping for the ratio to keep up is also a way of asking for Ethereum to at least follow BTC's own price movements. Those things are contradictory.
Why should it be that the ratio must improve? Just like comparing the price action of ETH relative to stock indices or FX is largely irrelevant, there is less merit than ever to compare ETH and BTC price trajectories. BTC does its thing, and will continue to do so as long as its first-mover advantage and PoW security model can sustain it. ETH charts its own course with virtually no intersect whatsoever with BTC's use cases and developments.
Am I missing something?
Also, has there been no daily over the past couple of days? I am no longer active on /r/ethfinance (still lurking until Reddit pulls the plug on API access at the end of June, but no longer contributing) so I am hoping that this community does not lose steam so quickly after opening.
Most people are in crypto for the money, and when a different asset goes up relative to ETH, they care about how much money they would have made if they had been long the other asset. It's really that simple.