Ethereum may be in the “doldrums” at the moment, but haters of the blockchain will probably end up looking “silly,” says the chief investment officer of Bitwise.
“It’s cool to hate Ethereum right now. I bet this ends up looking silly.”
In a Sept. 17 post, Bitwise’s Matt Hougan admits there has been a lot of negative community sentiment over Ethereum. The ETH/BTC ratio has been at its lowest in three years, and the price of Ether is flat compared to Solana (SOL) and Bitcoin (BTC).
“No one likes Ethereum right now,” he said.
However, he also argues that Ethereum is still home to 50% of stablecoins and 60% of all decentralized finance assets are locked on Ethereum, highlighting it in a Sept. 17 post.
Attendees at Singapore’s TOKEN2049 conference have also reported strong interest in Ethereum in the real world.
“As much as the timeline shits on Ethereum, they still very much have the majority of mind share at Token 2049,” observed Logan Jastremski, a founder and managing partner at crypto-focused investment firm Frictionless Capital.
More than 37,800 GitHub commits were made from Ethereum’s 2,615 active developers over the last week — 68% more than second-place Polygon, Cryptometheus data shows.
“When the next large traditional company wants to do a blockchain product, I bet they’ll choose Ethereum too,” Hougan added.
“It’s like the Microsoft of blockchains.”
Hougan acknowledged the “vibes” in the Ethereum community are “tough” right now, with Ether’s (ETH) price at a 40-month low against Bitcoin.
CoinGecko data shows that Ether is currently trading at $2,390, up 3% over the last 24 hours.
The cryptocurrency is only up 0.2% so far in 2024 compared to Bitcoin’s 40%.
Additionally, the US securities regulator appears to think staked-Ether assets are securities and there are concerns over how it views decentralized finance, a key driver behind Ethereum’s value, Hougan noted.
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Many industry pundits also ponder whether Ethereum “shot itself in the foot” by offloading much of its transaction activity to the second layer, Hougan said, pointing out that Ethereum’s revenues are at a four-year low.
However, Hougan believes the market will take another look at Ethereum as the upcoming United States presidential election looms, citing potential for some regulatory clarity to emerge.
“For now, it looks like a potential contrarian bet through the end of the year,” Hougan concluded.
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