Ethereum Value Proposition: The Great Psyop

How many times has bitcoin been declared "dead"?

477 times: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

and 477 times they've been wrong.

But now in 2024, as you see the major players like Blackrock, nation states, major public companies holding or considering holding BTC on their balance sheets, you can't say its dead anymore.

So who is the next biggest/easiest target? Ethereum

Majority of crypto socials, twitter, reddit etc are proclaiming "eTh is Ded"

Normies hear it enough times from enough "influencooors", see the slow price action, and think "huh, maybe its true?"

Thats what people SAY but lets look at the numbers:

ETH monthly active users near ATH: https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1858594776423297126/photo/2

ETH daily transaction count near ATH: https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1858594776423297126/photo/2

ETH and L2 TPS near ATH: https://l2beat.com/scaling/activity

ETH and L2's TVL = More than 3x the TVL of Solana, Binance Chain, Cardano, Avalanche, Sui, every other major L1 COMBINED: https://defillama.com/chains

ETH YTD Inflows are magnitudes higher than every other chain: https://x.com/EthereanVibin/status/1858574038106591295

ETH dapp usage up 38% in the last month:https://x.com/Cointelegraph/status/1859063030547370096 ETH stablecoins inflows eclipse every other chain: https://x.com/AdrianoFeria/status/ 1859089639513985093

ETH has more full time developers on it than every other L1 chain COMBINED: https://x.com/venturefounder/status/1858612777247486426

But its not just all about numbers right, there are the "intangible values/products/services" that chains introduce to the world, so lets see how ETH stacks up against the "competition"

Bitcoin has given the world: Digital Gold, simple but perceivably very valuable to the world Peer to peer permisssionless transactions, also extremely valuable

Ethereum has given the world: Smart contracts Decentralized Financial Applications Polymarket (the world's most accurate prediction market as seen by the US elections) Decentralized Stablecoins (DAI) Real World Asset Tokenization DAOs NFTs

Solana has given the world: A novel consensus mechanism - proof of History (kudos to Solana) Pump.fun? Memecoin casino?

Cardano has given the world: Charles Hoskinson podcasts? Vague hype tweets? Vague Influencer Marketing?

Come to Jesus moment for Alt L1's

I am not saying its a bad idea to hold SOL or ADA or that you cant make gains with those coins or others because you DEFINITELY can, as markets are irrational, hype driven/fomo driven, narrative driven, and narratives are relatively easy to shape/create when the vast majority of the users/capital don't keep up with or understand whats going on "under the hood" for these chains.

I am saying that the MAJORITY of the valuation of these chains are based on this obscure very techonological metric sometimes called: "fluff"

Dont believe me?

Solana: When was the last time you did anything on Solana besides trade memecoins? The memecoin casino has the illusion of being "great" but it turns out over 98% users in it lose money, 1.9% are breakeven, and .1% are in the green : https://x.com/ethereumintern_/status/1858370172072996889 https://x.com/chainyoda/status/1858319590444704226

For pete's sake, people on solana call someone who pushes a "mint" button to launch a memecoin on pump.fun a "dev". A "developer".....for pushing a button..... - moment of silence for this one-

Dont get me wrong, nothing wrong with consensual gambling, but if all the hype around Solana is that you can "get rich" with memecoins when in reality your odds are LITERALLY worse than Vegas, dont you think maybe youre getting just a littttle psyoped? https://x.com/chainyoda/status/1858319590444704226 Especially when the vast majority of the memes that pump are controlled/influenced by the same people that are pushing the narratives on twitter? Food for thought.

My best analogy for Solana is like if you went to a musical chains tournament, where people hop from one musical chairs game to the next, to the next, to the next, hoping to compound their gains. (except sometimes people pay the DJ and know when the music is gonna stop :P)

There's also the small matter of Solana seeing one of its largest token unlocks in HISTORY in Q1 of next year, flooding the ecosystem with fresh SOL supply, but we can just ignore that too: https://x.com/DU09BTC/status/1831208124365287642

Oh, and you cant build a decentralized financial system on a Vegas foundation.

Cardano:

Where to start, where to start...

Well how about this? Can you name one app on Cardano that you have used? Most people cant, because noone ACTUALLY uses the Cardano chain, not trying to be mean. This is just literally true.

Even their biggest launch some years back, "Sundaeswap" that was supposed to rival "Uniswap" was a royal failure, with transactions constantly failing and the chain ridiculously congested: https://x.com/cobie/status/1484289864900173825

But lets give them the benefit of the doubt on that, lets look at other metrics that are important like stablecoins:

Their native algorithmic stablecoin they created is called "Djed", how's that doing?

Well its marketcap rank is 2,275 and its total marketcap is $3.9 million: https://www.coingecko.com/en/categories/stablecoins

For context Tether USD is $129 billion, so a mere 33,076x bigger than DJED.

So its safe to say noone uses that either.

And then there's the "questionable" marketing from the Cardano ecosystem, always "promising" these "obscure/nebulous" things to get people hyped:

Charles Hoskinson saying “Rogan after Goguen” back in 2021, Goguen was their update set to launch in Q2 2021 but "Rogan" never happened: https://x.com/equalscash/status/1771275113029120192

Charles now "insinuating" he's going to work with the Trump admin next year: https://x.com/AltcoinGordon/status/1855492949863207193

Charles saying he signed an NDA with Spacex: https://x.com/CARDAN0ADA/status/1857474096805638483

He then clarifies in another video and says he hopes to reveal details in 4-8 weeks but "we'll see": https://x.com/angrycryptoshow/status/1858970634258124923

Meanwhile Elon has repeatedly confirmed he will not endorse any specific projects, although he is "supportive" of crypto as a whole: https://x.com/cb_doge/status/1787354882791399512 https://x.com/cb_doge/status/1848100967272665154

Charles has also said that he believes bitcoin is "like a religion, not a real ecosystem", that "we dont really need it", and that he sees Cardano surpassing Bitcoin and Ethereum in the future.

All of these things can appear as just innocent fluff or hype individually, but as a whole paint a much more concerning picture of the sort of "marketing" in the Cardano ecosystem, even from the top.

And the culmination of all of this ultimately is the "PSYOP":

That while Ethereum has near all time high activity, tvl, inflows, marketshare, devs, dapps, stablecoins, it is pronounced by the popular narrative as "dead"

While other chains who have foundations built on "memecoin casino mirages" and "fleeting promises" are propped up by the narrative as "the future"

Here's my TL:DR that essentially says as much:

https://x.com/etheraider/status/1859089080815849954

And to further clarify a "Psyop" doesnt have to be some grand conspiracy, there just have to be enough incentives in place and the wheels turn themselves.

I started this post with a point about Bitcoin, and so I'll end it that way.

Histocally in the stock market almost all stocks that hit $90 will hit $100. In the same vein, as soon as Bitcoin hit $90k the market psychologically built in the expectation that it would hit $100k. $100k is the largest historical and psychological barrier we will have seen to date with BTC, so until that moment arrives all eyes are on $BTC.

However once BTC hits 100k, the risk reward perception completely changes, the adjusted risk/reward for Bitcoin to 2x to 200k vs drop 50% to 50k becomes much more "even" and the exuberance for bitcoin has a very good chance of "tapering off"

And everytime bitcoin has tapered off in a bull, guess what happens? Eth skyrockets. But don't take my word for it, go check the charts going back multiple cycles.

Its always darkest before the dawn, the facemelting is only facemelting because it rips up suddenly when people least expect it, AKA when the FUD is at its peak.

Do with this what you will, believe it or not, makes no difference to me, but just know the narrative is slowly changing.

Slowly, then all at once: https://x.com/LayahHeilpern/status/1858587934943048172