Bitcoin Investor Issues Scathing Remarks About Ethereum
Tuur Demeester, an altcoin cynic, Bitcoin proponent, and crypto investor, recently compiled his years of skepticism regarding Ethereum (ETH), issuing a multi-faceted argument regarding why he’s against the current third most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Demeester, who has become a well-respected recently took to Twitter to convey his opinion via a 50-part thread, which quickly became the talk of the town.
1/ People often ask me why I’m so “against” Ethereum. Why do I go out of my way to point out flaws or make analogies that put it in a bad light?
— Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester) December 28, 2018
Although he gave a multitude of reasons why he’s skeptical of the project, a few overarching points persisted throughout his thread. Demeester noted that ETH’s underlying architecture and culture is the opposite of Bitcoin’s, while still aiming to offer what the flagship cryptocurrency set out to solve. In his eyes, the overlap includes decentralization, immutability, store of value, asset issuance, and smart contracts.
He subsequently noted that as such, Ether’s ~$15 billion valuation is “still too high,” quipping that project remains a science experiment at best. The fact that Ether isn’t a viable form of digital money in Demeester’s eyes only adds to this rationale that its valuation is well overinflated.
Demeester, who founded Adamant Capital (a self-proclaimed Bitcoin Alpha Fund), went on to bash Ethereum’s scaling prospects, first noting that sharding, often deemed the holy grail of blockchain protocols, is still a “pipe dream.” The Bitcoin proponent added that the promise that on-chain scaling was nigh are false, even explaining that a preliminary Casper whitepaper was lackluster.
The Adamant Capital chief added that Proof of Stake (PoS), which is key in the integration of sharding, isn’t a viable consensus mechanism to enlist, noting that there are censorship vulnerabilities. Demeester even referenced his own tweet, which claimed that “Ethereumism” sounds like Marxism, as PoS, a still “unproven, [yet] ideal future” for the project, will purportedly provide perpetual income for all Ether holders. The critic added:
Vitalik is no stranger to embracing free lunch ideas, e.g. during his 2014 ETH announcement speech, where he described a coin with a 20% inflation tax as having “no cost” to users.
In closing, doing his best to convey the cardinal points of his argument in a short message, Demeester explained that the Ethereum ICO was akin to a securities offering, whereas purchasing Ether for BTC was like “buying shares in a startup that had “invent time travel” as part of its business plan. He even quipped that the project is the “Yahoo of our day — an unscalable “blue chip” cryptocurrency.”
Vitalik Buterin Reacts
Since Demeester released his scathing comments, a number of Ether proponents have come out to rebut a number of his points. Most notably, Vitalik Buterin himself, the Russian-Canadian coder extraordinaire that is a co-founder of Ethereum, released a point-by-point response via a Reddit thread on the matter.
In Buterin’s response, which gained traction on the bonafide Ethereum subreddit, the developer did his best to break down each of Demeester’s points, and provide evidence to claim why such criticism was baseless or non-sensical. On the matter of ETH being a science experiment, Buterin, who was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from Basel University, simply stated that this isn’t an argument.
ETH Logo Title Image Courtesy of Descryptive.com via Flickr
