Why Ethereum is the ‘the smarter way to play’

Ethereum has been receiving a lot of positive encouragement lately, thanks to the development activity. It is no wonder then that venture capitalist Bill Gurley recently championed the use of Ethereum and praised the network’s community.

In an interview with Bloomberg, the investor espoused Ethereum while clarifying that his support for the network is personal. He said,

“I have to say I was swayed by the arguments of the Ethereum crowd. And so, I’ve taken a personal position – not something to Benchmark.”

Gurley, who is a partner at Silicon Valley VC firm, Benchmark, is considered to be a top dealmaker in the technology industry. While he didn’t specify how much he had invested in Ethereum, he was all praise for the Ethereum community’s comparatively “pragmatic” outlook along with the technological changes that the blockchain has recently adopted through the London hardfork. He said,

“They seem to be open to change and are basically making several changes which I think will bring down fees and will be very beneficial. The developer community is clearly in the Ethereum camp.”

Another scoring point for Gurley was Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake, which would comply with the ESG concerns that Bitcoin typically faces due to its energy-intensive mining protocol. He added,

“It seems to me to be the smarter way to play if you’re going to have crypto exposure.”

Even as the investor unraveled his love for Ethereum, he clarified that he was not a maximalist and wasn’t arguing for people to invest in cryptocurrency.

Gurley is certainly not alone in his love for Ethereum, as many big-ticket investors in the past have expressed an affinity for the coin. Canadian Entrepreneur Keven O’ Leary, who had earlier been a Bitcoin enthusiast, recently flipped into support for the second-largest cryptocurrency.

Likewise, The CEO of top investment firm DeVere Group, Nigel Green, had predicted that it was soon poised to flip Bitcoin due to its “unstoppable” growth.

Both the investors had based their viewpoint on the EIP-1559 upgrade which introduce the burn mechanism into the system and the upcoming transition of the network to ETH 2.0. Many have speculated that this shift could severely boost investor interest in the blockchain, especially those concerned about the environment.

Moreover, the adoption of network upgrades itself has been a success story thus far. According to a tweet by Yearn Finance developer “banteg,” users are onboarding the upgrade rapidly, especially when compared to Bitcoin’s SegWit upgrade that went live four years ago. While Segwit took 4 years to be used for 80% of the total transactions, EIP-1559 took 3 weeks to reach a 55% adoption rate.

Adoption rate of two major transaction type upgrades

SegWit went live on 2017-08-25 and is currently used for about 80% of Bitcoin transactions.

EIP-1559 went live on 2021-08-05 and already has 55% adoption. SegWit took two years to get to these levels. pic.twitter.com/kuFHRpmeXH

— banteg (@bantg) August 27, 2021