Shifting Markets - The Daily Gwei #528

The times have changed.

Anthony Sassano

Aug 29, 2022

I try not to comment or focus on the crypto markets too often since I believe that all short to medium term movements are purely noise and I’m a (very) long-term investor. Though I’ve had a few people ask me lately if the current market structure is anything like previous ones I’ve experienced and the answer is quite nuanced. It definitely does feel like the “crab market” that I experienced in 2019 but at the same time everyone is much more optimistic about crypto compared to back then (and there are many more proven use-cases).

sassal.eth 🦇🔊🐼 @sassal0x

I remember in 2020 there was this absolute brainlet thesis of a "barbell strategy" where people believed that you only needed to buy DeFi tokens + BTC to outperform Since then, ETH has destroyed DeFi tokens and has outperformed BTC by 3-4x Thanks for playing

The most interesting thing for me over the last few years has been watching how the market has changed its treatment of BTC and ETH. Back in 2019, no one except the most die-hard Ethereans thought that ETH was money or that ETH could be a store of value asset - and you’d be laughed at for even comparing ETH to BTC. Fast forward to today and ETH is accepted as the only other “blue chip” asset in crypto alongside BTC. I would go even further and argue that ETH is a much more investable asset than BTC (especially post-merge) and I think more people are recognizing this as the bear market continues and ETHs performance against BTC holds strong.

I don’t want to rag on BTC too much, but right now I can’t really see what narratives it has left. It has failed as an inflation hedge, it has failed as a payments system (the Lightning Network is a joke), the Bitcoin network has a weak long-term security policy, headwinds related to PoW are only going to get worse and the community is made up of people with an extreme case of Dunning-Kruger. Obviously I’m biased in my opinion of BTC but I don’t think anything I’ve said is false - BTC really has fallen very far from what it originally aspired to be. In saying all of this, I can still see BTC going back to its all time high against USD and beyond, but I strongly believe that ETH will both outperform and eventually flip it for the #1 spot.

I don’t just believe ETH will flip BTC because of some narrative I’ve told myself - there are very real fundamental drivers at play here and I’ve previously outlined some of them in this piece. On top of my believe that ETH is one of the best investments in the world from a risk/reward perspective, the Ethereum network itself has so many tailwinds behind it from layer 2 development/adoption, continued execution of the long-term Ethereum roadmap, serious DeFi builders sticking with Ethereum and the entire NFT/Metaverse use-case centered around Ethereum & ETH as a money. The best part is, and I know it’s a meme to say this, we really are only still at the very beginning of it all.

All in all I remain incredibly bullish on ETH and Ethereum despite the bear market that we’ve been experiencing for quite a while now. I know that the wider macro environment is not very favorable right now and I know that there is a lot of economic pain in the world, but I still believe Ethereum as both a technology and a movement can greatly help with many of the current and future issues that the world will deal with.

Sadly, I can’t say the same for Bitcoin.

Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano

Enjoyed today’s piece? I send out a fresh one every week day - be sure to subscribe to receive it in your inbox!

Join the Daily Gwei Ecosystem

All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.