Bitcoin (BTC) is at risk of a “flippening” from Ether (ETH), mainstream media claims as some familiar FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt —returns to the spotlight.
As BTC/USD continues to flag below $40,000, an old argument has resurfaced — but major investors are fighting back.
Bloomberg: ETH "will likely exceed Bitcoin"
In an article on May 31, Bloomberg cited multiple sources claiming that in the future, Ether will overtake Bitcoin as the world’s cryptocurrency of choice.
The largest altcoin “will likely exceed Bitcoin at some point in the future, as Ethereum will be superior when it comes to innovation and developer interest,” Tegan Kline, co-founder of Blockchain firm Edge & Node, told the publication.
Another executive added that Ethereum has a “better growth story.”
The argument is far from new and has appeared regularly throughout Ethereum’s existence. The Ethereum network’s recent major upgrade has kept its profile afloat, and ETH has outperformed Bitcoin over the past year and formed the backbone of the decentralized finance (DeFi) phenomenon.
ETH/BTC, long on a losing streak, reached its highest exchange rate in three years earlier this month.
ETH has also managed to preserve more of its price gains than Bitcoin in recent days. As Cointelegraph reported, a key moving average remains intact for ETH/USD, while BTC/USD has failed to recapture "lines in the sand."
Druckenmiller compares Ethereum to MySpace
For all its impressive performance, however, claiming that Ethereum will replace Bitcoin at the top is nonsensical, many argue — and not only staunch Bitcoin supporters.
In an interview with The Hustle last week, billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller became the latest non-technical figure to cast aside doubts about Bitcoin’s staying power.
“I think — because it’s a brand, it’s been around for 14 years, because of the finite supply — it [Bitcoin] has sort of won the store-of-value game,” he said.
“Is it going to be gold? I don’t know. It’s sure as hell doing a good imitation of it the last year or two.”
For Druckenmiller, Ethereum is to Bitcoin what MySpace is to Google.
“I’m a little more skeptical of whether it can hold its position. It reminds me a little of MySpace before Facebook,” he continued.
“Or maybe a better analogy is Yahoo before Google came along. Google wasn’t that much faster than Yahoo, but it didn’t need to be. All it needed to be was a little bit faster and the rest is history.”
Others have long pointed out that technically, Bitcoin and Ethereum have little in common. Bitcoin’s finite supply and years of resistance to attacks place it in a different league than any other cryptocurrency, and comparing another one to it is an apples-to-oranges comparison.
“I generally think all the other digital currencies don’t really compete with Bitcoin and are in no way similar to Bitcoin,” Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard, famously told the Unchained Podcast in August 2017.
“I think their real competition is, if I’m generous, I’ll say Amazon Web Services and these kinds of platforms.”