Ethereum Is Crushing Bitcoin This Year. Should You Buy It Now?

The second-most-popular cryptocurrency, Ether (CRYPTO: ETH), the native cryptocurrency on the Ethereum network, has been crushing Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) so far in 2021 after Bitcoin's huge run-up at the end of 2020 and earlier this year. Even after the big recent drop in crypto prices, Ethereum is still up roughly 280% year to date as of May 20, while Bitcoin is up about 43%. With the outperformance and the recent dip, I think now could be an opportune time to buy Ethereum. Here's why:

Like Bitcoin, Ethereum is a decentralized network powered by the digital ledger blockchain technology, and it can be used to conduct digital payments. But it differs from Bitcoin in that code can be built and programmed onto Ethereum's blockchain network to create smart contracts and decentralized apps that run constantly and that can't be manipulated or controlled by a third party. Ethereum.org calls Ethereum "the world's programmable blockchain," which I think is a great description.

And this is what is making Ethereum exciting right now and part of what has been driving up the price. For a while now, people have been saying how much real-world applicability blockchain has, but now we are really starting to see it. Ethereum is powering most nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which have taken off this year. NFTs are digital files such as art, video, and audio stored on blockchain, and each has a digital signature that makes it unique and impossible to duplicate. Owning a piece of digital art that anyone can see a copy of by Googling might sound silly, but it's not unlike owning physical art or baseball cards. Sure, you could get a famous painting copied and no one might know, but you wouldn't have the original of that painting, which is worth way more.

Source Fool.com