- ETH-USD
+1.28% - NVDA
-2.21%
It’s not an understatement to say that the past 11 months have been rough for Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH). After hitting a new all-time high of $4,954 last August, Ethereum has been in free fall. It’s now down a whopping 62% from those highs.
As a result, Ethereum has become a very polarizing investment. It has been so good, for so long, that it seems remarkably undervalued at just $1,800. Over the past decade, crypto investors have reliably been able to “buy the dip” on Ethereum.
Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a “Double Down” signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same “Total Conviction” signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue »
That might have been the case in the past, but is it still true today?
The bull case for Ethereum
The good news is that Ethereum seems to recognize that it needs to do something to turn things around. For example, co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently released a new “Lean Ethereum” road map that outlines a series of changes, advances, and upgrades that will help the embattled blockchain reignite growth over the next few years.
This new road map specifically targets areas such as quantum cryptography, promising full quantum resistance by 2029. In addition, it promises major upgrades to transaction processing speeds, a reduction in overall complexity, and a newfound focus on user privacy. According to a growing number of analysts, this could be the biggest upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain since the much-ballyhooed Merge in 2022.
At the same time, there have been shakeups at the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit organization that helps to support the highly decentralized blockchain. Moreover, a new nonprofit called Ethereum Institutional recently launched, with the goal of making the Ethereum blockchain much more accessible to big institutions and corporations.
The bear case for Ethereum
The problem, quite simply, is that this might be a case of too little, too late. A common complaint about Ethereum is that its overall blockchain architecture has become too complex. All the value is now flowing to Layer-2 blockchains that sit atop the core Ethereum blockchain, rather than to Ethereum itself.
Case in point: Robinhood Markets recently launched Robinhood Chain, a Layer-2 blockchain on top of the core Ethereum blockchain. By doing so, Robinhood doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Robinhood can leverage the core features of the Ethereum blockchain (such as security and scalability) and now offer advanced trading functionality to its customers. That’s bullish for Robinhood, but is it really bullish for Ethereum?
