Futures and options on Ethereum are becoming increasingly attractive to investors, and this can help increase Ethereum's investment returns.

An analysis of the Ethereum derivatives market shows that futures and options for this cryptocurrency are attracting more and more interest from investors. This may indicate that many market participants expect the price of Ethereum to rise after a successful bitcoin rally. At the moment, the investment yield of bitcoin since the beginning of the year is 163%, while Ethereum shows a more modest 89%. A week ago, these figures were 127.5% and 70.62%, respectively. This trend has continued over the past three months, where bitcoin has gained 60%, while Ethereum has grown by 35%.

The ratio of the price of Ethereum to the price of bitcoin has decreased by 25% since the beginning of the year and currently stands at 0.053. Ethereum's share in the cryptocurrency market is also at its lowest level since May 2021. Ethereum typically grew faster than Bitcoin in bullish market phases, as it did in 2017 and 2021, while bitcoin gained faster than Ethereum in bearish phases such as 2015 and 2019. Now, if the market is in a "bullish" phase, we see that bitcoin surpasses Ethereum in terms of price growth.

However, this exception to the general trend may be due to the growing demand for futures and options on Ethereum, which is confirmed by data from the Chicago-based CME Group exchange and the Deribit cryptocurrency trading platform. Perhaps Ethereum still has the potential to catch up with bitcoin in terms of investment returns, especially given the growing interest in derivatives on Ethereum. Over the past five days, investments in non-deliverable Ethereum futures at CME Group have increased by 30% to $711 million, while bitcoin futures have increased by 19% to $4.9 million. Ethereum futures on the CME Group represent 50 ETH in one contract, while bitcoin futures have 5 BTC in one contract.

It is also worth noting that the premium on Ethereum futures compared to its current price is 5% higher than the premium on bitcoin futures. Statistics on options on Deribit also indicate an increasing demand for options to buy Ethereum and options to sell bitcoins with the possibility of execution in four weeks. This further indicates the growing confidence of investors in a possible Ethereum rally and their caution towards bitcoin.