Michaël van de Poppe identifies a divergence between Ethereum's stablecoin activity and price performance that closely mirrors early 2019, months before a significant market reprice.
Ethereum's 2019 Pattern: Network Grows Before Price Moves
Michaël van de Poppe recently pointed to something in Ethereum's current behavior that deserves more attention than the price chart alone would suggest. The setup, as he frames it, is a familiar one: network activity accelerating while price sits in relative stagnation. Specifically, stablecoin transaction volumes on Ethereum are climbing, but that growth isn't showing up in ETH's market valuation yet. According to van de Poppe, this divergence closely mirrors what Ethereum exhibited in 2019—a period when on-chain usage expanded meaningfully for months before price eventually responded with a sustained move.
The 2019 reference point matters because of what it represented structurally. That period followed a brutal bear market and preceded a genuine cycle recovery. Network fundamentals began recovering quietly while sentiment was still depressed and most market participants had moved their attention elsewhere. The price response came later, and when it did, many who were watching only price charts missed the early setup entirely.
What van de Poppe is identifying now follows a similar logic. Stablecoin activity on a network is a meaningful proxy for real economic utility—it reflects actual settlement demand, DeFi usage, and capital moving through the ecosystem with intention. When that activity grows while price lags, it suggests the network is being used even as speculative interest remains subdued. That's a different condition than a network where both usage and price are declining together.
The honest caveat is that pattern recognition in markets is probabilistic, not deterministic. The 2019 parallel could compress the timeline, extend it, or not materialize in the same way at all. Market structure today differs from 2019 in important ways: ETF products exist, institutional participation is deeper, and macro conditions carry more weight on crypto correlations than they did five years ago.
But the underlying observation still holds independent of the historical comparison. A network where stablecoin volumes are rising while price underperforms is showing signs of demand accumulation beneath the surface. Whether that demand eventually drives price higher depends on factors beyond on-chain data—but ignoring the divergence because price hasn't moved yet is exactly the kind of oversight that tends to get expensive in hindsight.
Van de Poppe's read isn't a price call. It's a structural observation about where Ethereum sits in its cycle. And the 2019 echo, if it holds, suggests the more important move may still be ahead of us rather than behind.