Ethereum's native token, Ether (ETH), may beat Bitcoin (BTC) to new all-time highs, fresh analysis reveals.

In a tweet on Wed, Ki Young Ju, CEO of on-chain analytics service CryptoQuant, highlighted a "sell-side liquidity crunch" that could yet give ETH the edge over BTC.

Ether liquidity shortfall "intensifying"

With Bitcoin up over 50% versus its lows of $29,000, altcoins have also begun to reawaken, with Ether as no exception.

The largest altcoin has recaptured $3,000, a level that, this week, is now in the process of being retested as support.

Despite attending focusing on Bitcoin reclaiming $50,000, optimism over Ether remains high later on its successful London hard fork deployment earlier this calendar month.

Thanks in role to the supply changes pushed through via the difficult fork, a liquidity shortfall could ultimately serve to push ETH/USD to new historic peaks earlier BTC/USD manages to practise the same.

"$ETH might attain its all-time loftier earlier than $BTC in the long term," Ki summarized.

"Current $ETH price is closer to ATH compared to $BTC. Higher demand, lower supply. $ETH sell-side liquidity crisis still intensifies, while $BTC exchange reserve stopped its downward trend in May."
BTC exchange reserve chart. Source: CryptoQuant

In terms of numbers, Bitcoin substitution reserves have been declining since May, only to return in late July. From a top of 2.54 million on July 26, BTC reserves then declined to 2.44 meg this week.

By contrast, ETH has seen a mostly linear downtrend since late May's local high of 21.43 million held on exchanges. As of this calendar week, the exchange balance is around 19.25 1000000.

ETH exchange reserve nautical chart. Source: CryptoQuant

Battle of the supply shocks

Ki is not alone in forecasting a more rampant bull charge for Ether compared to Bitcoin.

Related: Analysts say this fundamental metric suggests an altcoin season is at paw

As Cointelegraph reported, Bloomberg Intelligence has also come up out favoring ETH over BTC in a recent report, even forecasting a "flippening" of the largest cryptocurrency.

Meanwhile, data continues to show a supply shock underway for Bitcoin as well — something that has its own historical precedent for sparking BTC price run-ups.

"Illiquid Supply Shock ratio has been a expert leading indicator over the past few months," analyst William Clemente 3 commented on the latest figures from young man on-chain analytics resources Glassnode.

"Impulses in both directions have resulted in price action post-obit. Equally the metric continues to grind slowly up, currently at levels prev. 58K BTC, watching for another major impulse."
Bitcoin supply shock annotated nautical chart. Source: William Clemente III/Twitter

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