The area around the bullish trendline served as an accumulation zone in 2019-20.

A widely-tracked momentum indicator suggests downtrend exhaustion.

Ether’s {{ETH}} bitcoin {{BTC}}-denominated market price, the ETH/BTC ratio, is flirting with a bullish trendline drawn from 2016 and 2017 lows, offering hope to bulls on the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

Since January, the trendline has consistently restricted the pair’s downside in a pattern reminiscent of 2019-20. Back then, it served as an accumulation zone, eventually leading to a renewed bull market in the first half of 2021, as shown by a chart sourced from TradingView.

A monthly chart of moving average convergence divergence (MACD) histogram, an indicator used to gauge trend strength and changes, favors continued defense of and renewed upswing from the trendline. The histogram has produced shallower bars below the zero line since December 2023, indicating a downtrend exhaustion.

Sophisticated traders, however, do not see ether outperforming bitcoin in the coming months. That’s evident in Deribit’s options market, where ether call options, or bullish bets, expiring in six months trade at a 5.5% premium to put options, or bearish bets. A slightly higher call premium is seen in bitcoin options, a sign of traders being extra bullish on BTC, according to Amberdata.

The continued bias for bitcoin stems from concerns that demand for ether spot ETFs, which debuted in the U.S. on Tuesday, will be weaker than for bitcoin ETFs and slow network activity on ETH’s parent blockchain, Ethereum.

“Market has already priced in this news as ETHBTC price has been in downtrending range since announcement in May,” Pankaj Balani, CEO and co-founder of Delta Exchange, said in an email. “The market is expecting lower inflows in ETH ETFs compared to inflows witnessed by BTC ETFs this year. ETH has underperformed BTC this year as gas fees in ETH L1 blockchain remains at yearly lows with activity shifting to ETH L2s and Solana.”