Jean Galea

Ethereum has gotten a lot of flak over the past couple of years, but I believe it has the potential to provide better gains than Bitcoin itself in the immediate future.

It has a smaller market cap and does not have as much global recognition as Bitcoin does, which I view as a growth potential aspect.

The current hot trend in the crypto space are DeFi project, and guess what? Almost all of these projects are built on top of Ethereum. There is a ton of money flowing into DeFi and as a consequence I believe that this will bring about a significant rise in the price of Ethereum itself.

Also on the roadmap is the release of Ethereum 2.0 which has been in the works for many months and is finally nearing completion.

Second only to Bitcoin in Market Cap

Ethereum has been second only to Bitcoin in market cap for several years now. As of August 2020, Bitcoin’s market cap is still about five times higher than Ethereum’s.

However, Ethereum’s volume is rising faster relative to Bitcoin’s. When the ETH/BTC volume ratio rises, it indicates that traders are trading Ethereum more relative to Bitcoin and that’s a good proxy of interest.

With the recent hype surrounding various Open Finance protocols, ETH/BTC price ratio is up 112% since September 2019; from 0.0162 BTC to 0.0343 BTC. However, ETH/BTC is still down 78% from its all-time high of ~0.155 BTC in June 2017.

If the current push for DeFi doesn’t wane, I can see that price ratio possibly getting closer to its previous highs, meaning there is a potential to make more profit investing in Ethereum than there is investing in Bitcoin.

Hate from Bitcoin Maximalists

If you do any kind of reading or research about Ethereum, you’ll find a lot of criticism, normally coming from hardcore Bitcoin maximalists.

The reality is that Ethereum is not a scam, of course. If you want to read more about the Ethereum journey and appreciate all the work that has gone into building this protocol, I recommend reading The Infinite Machine by Camila Russo.

One of the main arguments against Ethereum is the so-called pre-mine. Although it is true that a portion of the early eth coins were reserved for the founders, nowadays the distribution among big holders is almost the same as that of Bitcoin:

Bitcoin’s Top 10k Holders: 10.54M BTC (57.44%)

Ethereum’s Top 10k Holders: 57.2M ETH (56.70%)

It’s important to contrast this with other networks:

In XRP 16 addresses hold 55.2% of XRP.

In BCH 1100 addresses hold 56.8% of BCH

In BSV 1250 addresses hold 55.6% of BSV

In Litecoin 300 addresses hold 54.3% of LTC

In Tron 1031 addresses hold 51.1% of TRX.

It is very evident that Bitcoin and Ethereum are in a league of their own when it comes to equity of distribution. The concentration of holdings of the other networks mentioned above is reason enough not to invest in their tokens, but the same cannot be said for Ethereum, thus the premine argument does not hold water.

Moreover, the most influential person behind Ethereum, founder Vitalik Buterin, has proven to be very dedicated to the Ethereum cause and less pursuant of personal riches. He currently owns less than 0.9% of ETH and for every ETH he has sold, he has donated the equivalent to the ecosystem.

According to analysis of ETH movements, one can also see that there are significant transfers of USDC, USDT, DAI and Paxos from a handful of addresses into exchanges BEFORE large spikes in anti-ETH tweets (both spikes in volume and negative sentiment). As soon as the bad news is out and the price falls, they swoop in to buy big chunks of ETH at the lower price.

It’s hard to believe that there is something fishy going on behind the spreading of FUD as it usually comes from Bitcoin maximalists who have an otherwise very respectable position in the crypto community. But it is definitely something that makes me think that in the crypto space it is always very important to take any news with a pinch of salt.

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If you’re looking to reserve a small proportion of your investment portfolio into alternative assets – you might be considering cryptocurrencies. After all, the industry is now a multi-billion dollar trading arena. Not only does this include the retail investment space – but several institutional markets, too.

With that being said, it can be difficult to know which cryptocurrencies to invest in, not least because the space is now home to over 5,700 digital coins – as per CoinMarketCap.

As such, in this article, I am going to discuss which cryptocurrencies are potentially worth your attention in 2020. As always, the views expressed are those of my own subjective views – so always perform your own research!

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While I think that Bitcoin is my generation’s greatest innovation and is here to stay, I see some big hurdles that need to be overcome before it can really go mainstream.

Investors in the crypto space should weigh both the benefits and problems of the space when putting their money into any crypto project or asset. The benefits and problems are not set in stone, both can change over time.

Many people believe that Bitcoin has already gone mainstream, but the reality is that outside of the world’s most developed nations and, ironically, some of the most troubled nations (Venezuela, Argentina are two examples) the vast majority of the world’s population has little or no knowledge of Bitcoin, let alone any holdings.

I, therefore, believe that it is still very early days for the crypto space in general, and that there is enormous potential for growth both in terms of technology and in terms of valuation. However, there are some important hurdles that need to be progressively overcome in order for this crazy experiment to succeed long-term.

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Kraken is probably the world’s most well-known and secure exchange, and is definitely one of my favorites.

Jesse Powell, the founder and CEO also has an excellent reputation within the crypto space, as do many leading figures in the team, and that inspires a lot of confidence.

In this post, I’ll review Kraken and the features that I like best from this platform.

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