Hey folks, welcome to my final installment to my series “Things to Consider Before Entering the Bull Cycle.” This of course won’t be my last article that I write about speculating that’s happening in the crypto-space going forward, but I think that at this point I just simply can’t say “Before Entering the Bull Cycle” anymore, because now…I think it’s hard to deny that we haven’t already entered it.

Today, I’ll be talking about our old friend Ethereum ($ETH), and why I’ve been continuing to ramp up my DCA’ing into Crypto’s number 2 marketcap cryptocurrency, and from what I’ve seen, why it’s really the only one that hasn’t seen a major pop…yet. So if you think that you’ve already missed the station on this bull-market, here are some reasons why I think why the $ETH-train is still allowing for people to get on board.

$ETH doesn’t have the hype (which is a really good thing)

Whether it’s because of its low transactions per second or significantly high gas fees, there are a lot of people dogging on Ethereum right now, and beyond seeing all the hate that the Bankless guys are getting, it’s clear from market sentiment indicators that $ETH’s market sentiment is significantly different from its big brother $BTC:

$BTC is pushing extremely close to Extreme Greed, whereas Ethereum is barely out of neutral.

Additionally, if you remember all the bearish talk about all the other altcoins that occurred over the last year, ($AVAX which has done almost a 5x and Solana which has done almost a 10x) we’re now hearing some of the same things said about $ETH, some of the exact same things that were said in 2021 and 2022:

Everyone has forgotten about Proto-dank sharding

Now I’m not a dev so I’m not going to even pretend to try to explain the mechanics around proto-dank sharding, but assuming that it’s successful, proto-dank sharding will help Ethereum become magnitudes faster and cheaper to transact, to a theoretical 100,000 transactions per second. This massive upgrade to Ethereum’s infrastructure was originally expected to start to roll out in late 2023, but most recently it’s been penciled in for February 2024:

For me personally as someone who’s not a whale, the only barrier that prevents me from doing more transaction on Ethereum is due to the gas fees, and proto-dank sharding should make transacting significantly cheaper (and faster).

The fundamentals haven’t changed, instead they’ve gotten better

Speaking of upgrades, if you’ve tracked Ethereum’s supply post-merge, it’s clear that $ETH continues to be ultrasound and has been for the nearly a year:

In other words, $ETH has continued to be deflationary and more importantly, there’s still a lot of TVL going into Ethereum and its Layer-2’s:

According to L2beat, there are a total of 34 active Layer-2’s, and with 23 upcoming, there’s really no signs of the ecosystem’s growth stopping.

Ethereum is still #2 behind $BTC, and that’s probably not going to change any time soon.

I know there’s been a lot of talk about Solana flipping Ethereum’s daily transaction volumes, but I think it’s important to remember that Ethereum and Solana have two significantly different temperatures right now — Solana is at a point of high fever pitch whereas Ethereum is being dragged through the mud. Despite this, Ethereum still has significant transaction volumes, and conversely, it still has nearly 5 times the total marketcap dominance compared to Solana:

https://www.coingecko.com/en/global-charts

Doing some rough paper napkin math, assuming that the price of $ETH remains stagnant, this means that $SOL would have to appreciate 5 times in size, or in other words to more than $600 dollars for 1 $SOL in order to be in the same league as old $ETH.

$ETH Spot ETF

And last but not least, because it’s the second most popular cryptocurrency out there, my bet is that once a spot $BTC ETF gets approved, it seems logical that many financial institutions (as some already have) will start pushing for a spot $ETH ETF to be the eventual next crypto-asset in line to pass the SEC’s approval finish line.

As a secondary-order of effect, seeing as we don’t see nearly the same market sentiment in $BTC as we do $ETH, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the potential for an Ethereum Spot ETF has not been priced in yet.

Conclusion

It’s actually a bit comforting to me when I’m reading headlines or tweets about how Ethereum might be on its last leg — for me it’s an indicator that there’s still some time to fill up my $ETH bags, something that I’m not sure I could say as strongly for some of the other assets out there that have already pumped.

Additionally, what’s great is that similar to Grayscale’s $GBTC, you can also still buy $ETH at a NAV discount of more than 10%:

Could $ETH really be killed by one of its competitors? Sure, I guess so. But this story has been played out before, and I really don’t see it happening this market cycle. However, if you have any counter-arguments, I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

And as always, thanks for taking the time to read this and be sure to follow me on twitter (https://twitter.com/CryptosWith) to get all my latest updates. Also, looking for a gift for your Crypto-loving/hating friend? Give them a REKT journal to cheer them up!

Disclaimer: And as a final reminder, this is not financial advice and this is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please as always, do your own research and find what investments are best for you. Cheers everyone!