March 12, 2020 marked one of the most violent capitulation events in recent crypto market history. Amid the global pandemic shock, Bitcoin and Ethereum entered a phase of extreme stress. For that very reason, this date provides an especially solid analytical baseline for measuring which network has built a deeper expansion in holders since that inflection point.

According to Santiment’s Total Amount of Holders metric, Bitcoin rose from 29.73 million holders on March 12, 2020 to 58.86 million on April 2, 2026. This represents an increase of 29.13 million holder addresses, equivalent to 97.98%growth. In other words, Bitcoin nearly doubled its holder base from the COVID capitulation.

Ethereum, by contrast, rose from 37.05 million to 187.29 million holders over the same period. That represents an increase of 150.24 million holder addresses and a growth rate of 405.51%. In other words, Ethereum outpaced Bitcoin in both relative and absolute holder growth within this metric.

The central conclusion is clear: since the capitulation of March 2020, Ethereum has shown a clearly stronger expansion in holders than Bitcoin under Santiment’s address-based reading.

Even so, the interpretation must remain rigorous. This metric measures holder addresses, not unique individuals. Therefore, it should not be simplistically translated into the idea that Ethereum has “more real investors” than Bitcoin. What it clearly does show is that Ethereum’s ownership distribution expanded with much greater intensity from that global capitulation event onward.

Moreover, this expansion is unlikely to be explained by a single cause. It is more plausible to understand it as the result of several converging drivers: the growth of DeFi, the issuance and circulation of stablecoins, the activity of applications and smart contracts, and the development of staking as a layer of economic participation.

In this context, the Shanghaiupgrade may have acted as a catalyst by normalizing the liquidity profile of staked ETH, while a clearer regulatory framework for stablecoins in the United States, such as the GENIUS Act, could further strengthen Ethereum’s role as monetary infrastructure.

Bitcoin, for its part, sends a different but equally solid signal: doubling its holder base during a period marked by volatility, macroeconomic tightening, and capital rotation confirms structural resilience of the highest order.

From an institutional perspective, the post-pandemic market produced two clearly differentiated adoption profiles: Bitcoin consolidated its strength through its behavior as a store of value, while Ethereum led the expansion through a network with greater density of use, more layers of economic participation, and a stronger capacity to absorb new vectors of on-chain activity.