Uncle ↑

Listening to David’s explanation of why he sold was pretty mind numbing lol… I recently shared that I was a toxic Bitcoin maximalist for roughly 8 years, from 2017 to late 2024. Stablecoins are what initially made me revisit my thesis on Ethereum, and on ether as Ethereum’s native asset. That, combined with the rapid approach of the agentic economy - a world with an infinite number of autonomous economic actors sending value through stablecoins across a small handful of networks that society has deemed valuable - made me reevaluate further. So I went back and revisited my priors on Ethereum. Were my early concerns around centralization, monetary policy, and network effects still valid after all these years? Surely, yes. I set out to prove myself right. I found out I was wrong. The centralization concerns I had entirely faded. While I was 100% encapsulated in my Bitcoin bubble, Ethereum had slowly, quietly, and relentlessly built the only other WWIII-proof, global, credibly neutral, decentralized protocol. And in some areas, Ethereum had actually become more decentralized than Bitcoin: client diversity, validator distribution, and a secure long-term scaling/security model through proof of stake. Ethereum had matured. It had grown out of its early “shitcoin” association. It had become the only truly permissionless, censorship resistant, credibly neutral, and valuable protocol outside of Bitcoin. It grew up. That matters because the only reason I was ever Bitcoin-only was that, at the time, there were no other networks with the protocol traits that could plausibly make all of global finance, and eventually much of humanity, value them at the deepest level. Back then, it was only Bitcoin. So the irony here is incredible. Just as Ethereum and ether have finally matured, just as Ethereum has distanced itself from the decentralized-in-name-only, venture-backed, fake startup, “we’re hiding behind a blockchain” mentality, now a small group of influencers have decided to become negative on Ethereum. When Bitcoiners use the term “shitcoiner,” this is what they are usually talking about. Bag chasers. People who want their chain to act like a company. Permissioned. Hyper-structured. Marketing team. CEO. Quarterly reports. Revenue. Earnings. Some polished growth narrative for VCs. Basically, a bunch of stupid shit that already exists in the fiat world. The same world Bitcoin, and now Ethereum, were created to help us escape from. To suddenly be disappointed that Ethereum has a broader mandate than “pump my bag,” and is instead focused on hardening the traits that make the network valuable over decades, tells you a lot about how these people misunderstand it. CROPS is the value proposition. Censorship resistance. Resilience. Openness. Permissionlessness. Security. That is why society values Bitcoin. That is why society now values Ethereum. And that is why the Laura Shins, Ansems, and David Hoffmans of the world jumping ship now is so revealing. They are not leaving because the thesis broke. They are leaving because they never had the thesis in the first place. They do not and never have seen the value in decentralized, global, open systems - sanctuary technologies or neutral rails that can materially improve people’s lives. What they have always chased is a high-growth stock equivalent with a smaller market cap. A shiny new object that appears once or twice per cycle; violent upward momentum, narrative, and upside without the patience required to actually understand what is being built. They need to chase because they do not have the time horizon to hold a thesis and let conviction compound over time. CROPS is the entire value proposition. Do not let startup-brain influencers, who never understood why this ecosystem was created in the first place, gaslight you out of conviction.

JPMORGAN SAYS $ETH AND ALTCOINS ARE UNLIKELY TO OUTPERFORM $BTC WITHOUT MEANINGFUL IMPROVEMENTS IN NETWORK ACTIVITY, DEFI, AND REAL-WORLD USE CASES