Dunking to ETH for a while was fashionable.
The US Spot Bitcoin ETFS catapulted orange coins into mainstream (and $118,000) within a year and a half, but the investment vehicles had no same effect on Ether. This is currently trading at $3,400.
There are multiple problems. Ethereum is more difficult (and more expensive) to use than other Layer 1 like Solana. Network on-chain values are also split into ETH and Layer 2 tokens such as ARB and OP.
Needless to say, Ethereum lacks catchy slogans that help financial advisors (already baffled by Bitcoin) understand the value of native tokens due to their complexity. If BTC is digital gold, what is ETH? Digital oil? Ultrasound money? The currency that supplies electricity to computers around the world? It won't hit the same thing.
The Ethereum Ecosystem is focusing on these issues and is trying to fix the course as it is hardly effective as far as price is concerned. However, the emergence of ETH Treasury companies like Sharplink and Bitmine, which employ Michael Saylor's playbooks but have different assets, appears to have caused active gatherings.
Does it last? who knows. But when I write these lines, ETH has increased by 5.5% over the last 24 hours, 23% last week and about 135% since bottoming in April. The ETH/BTC ratio (which has been dipping straight since the September 2022 merge) is lower and is back in trading at the February level. Meanwhile, Ether ETFs have only just had their best days, attracting a net inflow of $726 million on Wednesday.
“The ecosystem narrative has been greatly improved,” Steve Berryman, chief business officer at Bitwise Onchain Solutions, told Coindesk. “We're making our roadmap more clear. We're beginning to see the benefits, we're also seeing institutional adoption, an increase in real-world assets. All of this is beginning to snowball together at the same time.”
Furthermore, the Stablecoin bill (which could now be ratified by Congress) will likely increase Ethereum over other networks, as more than half of the Stablecoin supply remains in its ecosystem.
Put it differently, Ethereum may emerge as a major winner due to the growing clarity of the crypto regulations that comes with Donald Trump's reelection. And it might help solve that marketing problem, Berryman argued: Ethereum can stop trying to define its complex nature in one catchy soundbyte, focusing on being known as a platform for stubcoins and real-world assets
How does it help ETH? The theory is as follows: “There's a direct relationship between the value held on a network and the price of ether. Ultimately, it's the value of the token that protects the network. If the network holds trillions of dollars, you can't secure it for $1 million,” Lowe said. “It basically needs to be proportional to the amount you're protected.”
“As that amount increases, the price of the token increases.”
