Why Bitcoin Will Win: The Bearish Case for Ethereum
Ethereum is the MySpace of decentralized finance. Hobbled together, scrappy, but provides an exciting glimpse into the future. We should be pleased with the new paradigms discovered through this experiment but should not expect it to be the de facto platform in a decade.
Ethereum has demonstrated intrinsic challenges that are insurmountable without an Ethereum 2. We have witnessed unauditability, scaling difficulties, centralization and high contract fees. Building second-layer solutions to make up for shortcomings is akin to patching cracks in the asphalt with duct tape.
In this piece, I’ll navigate why we should not confuse novelty of features for sustainable value, why Ethereum makes for a poor base layer, and what to expect in the decade ahead.
There will only be one base layer for digital scarcity of humanity and that is Bitcoin.
The “Bitcoin is money, Ethereum is apps” fallacy
There is a logical fallacy in arguing “Bitcoin is money, Ethereum is apps,” which draws a false equivalence between the value of money and apps. As any self-respecting financier knows, the value lies (quite literally) where wealth is stored.
“Applications are cheap. A store of wealth is expensive.”
Building applications is a solved problem.
We know how to recruit engineers, build organizations and assemble technical solutions. We have a bevy of technologies that provide affordances for user interfaces. We have best practices for effective engineering. We even have strategies for amplifying creativity during brainstorming.
The number of pages on CoinMarketCap.com is a testament to the commonality of applications.
What is not solved is building applications on top of a store of wealth.
In order to build applications on top of a store of wealth, you either appropriate an existing store of wealth and build on top of it (i.e. Plaid) or you build a new store of wealth (Bitcoin).
Building a digital store of wealth is so hard it has taken over half a century and is still not ready. The digital store of wealth is only ready when it stores a nontrivial portion portion of global wealth.
On August 11, 2020, MicroStrategy announced it had acquired 21,454 Bitcoin for $250 million. A single company bought the equivalent of all Bitcoin in Ethereum that day.
Building an application on Ethereum today is the worst of both worlds. It builds on a burgeoning new store of value with a tiny addressable market on top of a limited capacity network already showing strains.
The vast majority of global wealth is still outside of the system, waiting to designate a digital store of value.
Conceding that Bitcoin is the better store of value is conceding Bitcoin will be the disproportionate beneficiary of global wealth entering the system.
So where do applications fit in?
Imagine acquiring a bank. You are given a choice to either acquire the trillion dollars under management and no app or a smooth, slick app but not the financial assets.
It’s easier to make a new application where users are already present rather than move users to a new platform with an existing application. As we’ve seen in the previous section, most users will be on Bitcoin utilizing its value as a store of wealth.
“Applications will be built where wealth is stored.”
What we’ll see is the best ideas from current generation of DeFi applications (elastic supply, governance, fair distribution mechanisms, auditability) built into layer 2 solutions of Bitcoin that itself sits on top of multiple trillions of dollars of global wealth.
Why will this happen? Builders will note applications of value from the small pond of Ethereum and see a market opportunity to natively expose those features to the much larger accounts in Bitcoin, reaping proportionally higher revenue.
Why can’t we use Ethereum as a store of value?
“If native users of a platform are so important, why can’t we just use Ethereum as a store of value? After all, holders of Ethereum have seen much higher appreciation in value since its founding compared to Bitcoin.”
Here we refer back to the “The Bullish Case for Bitcoin” which lays out the core properties of money of which three critical areas Ethereum is weak against Bitcoin.
1. Verifiability
As we see in the indefatigable investigation by Pierre Rochard in his epic quest to audit Ethereum’s supply limit, verifying the total number of Ethereum is not a trivial task.
A number of supply adjustments had been made in node software instead of on-chain transactions, intermediate miner rewards calculated using uncles that are not finalized for a number of blocks, selfdestruct() that leaves ambiguity for token inactivity.
These factors make it impossible to have an objective measure without specifying an asterisk of the nuances appropriated for each method of calculation.
Lack of auditability makes Ethereum a nonstarter for firms desiring a store of value. Without an objective measure of supply comes an impossibility of assessing the value of your asset.
From measurement of the Ethereum supply through scripts, it has been hypothesized that there has been at least one inflation bug that has been exploited: https://twitter.com/GeistLight/status/1292647561380139009
2. Scarcity
There is no set limit of Ethereum by design. From inception it was designed to be an inflationary currency which is essential as a utility token executing applications but is fatal for a store of value.
There is an ongoing effort to curtail Ethereum’s inflation to appease to its holders which will be to its detriment as use as an application platform.
This tension between being an appreciating digital asset and utilization as fuel is intrinsic to Ethereum and cannot be removed. When Ethereum prices go up by a factor of ten, only smart contracts that can provide commensurate proportional value will be viable.
“Using Ethereum as a store of value creates a perverse relationship with increasing contract fees that undermine its value as an application network.”
As the price rises further, we will see the majority of use cases today become priced out, adding platform risk where users will now need to worry whether they will be able to get their assets back out in the event of Ethereum appreciation.
3. Censorship Resistance
It is an open secret that Infura is the defacto backend for Ethereum. Running a full Ethereum node is known and accepted to be an arduous task with astronomical processor requirements.
This problem is getting worse, not better as the system struggles with transaction volume today, much less the several magnitudes of transactions needed in the coming decade.
The solution provided is running Ethereum 2 and implementing applications on a second layer of Ethereum. This shifts the conversation to if building a new base layer or building on a second layer is necessary, what benefit is there to retain Ethereum as a base layer?
A Look Back from 2030
When we look back to 2017–2021, we will remember this period as the primordial era of where creative entrepreneurs came together to experiment with the new paradigm of permission-less smart contracts.
We will see a meaningful portion of global wealth go into Bitcoin by 2024 raising assets under management to a trillion dollars. Companies will convert overseas holdings into Bitcoin to counter inflationary risk for sovereign currencies. Smaller nation-states will start to acquire a reserve of Bitcoin to counter dollar strength to pay off their dollar-denominated debt.
During this time, firms small and large will rush to build applications to service wealth stored in Bitcoin on layer 2 and layer 3 solutions. Many of these applications will be inspired by what is currently built on top of Ethereum but addressing a much larger market.
Through two more halvings by 2030, everyone will have a Bitcoin account providing both a store of value as well as a unified platform that provides the largest installed userbase for financial products. We'll be ending the decade with 10M per Bitcoin, (one magnitude increase each for the three halving periods: 2020-2024, 2024-2028, 2028-2032) with Bitcoin serving as the generational store of wealth for those with the foresight to stack sats and hodl.
Tips for Builders
You’re not late. In fact you’re incredibly early. We’re still building the store of value that will be the foundation to the financial apps that you’ll build. Ethereum is a nice environment for experimenting with new paradigms that are made possible through smart contracts.
But understand that the bulk of your future customers will be onboarding onto a different platform when they do arrive. There will be a bonanza period where we see thousands of companies and millions of retail users adopting Bitcoin.
It’ll be up to you to recognize the arbitrage opportunity to offer product features in native Bitcoin format to beat other products that must employ bridges to access wealth stored in Bitcoin.
About Me
For future writing, you can follow me on Twitter at @uncapslock.
This article is for information purposes only and is not intended to be investment advice.
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