The heavyweight showdown. The top 2 projects. Bitcoin and Ethereum. Which do you prefer? Which would you rather hold? That’s our topic today. 1 BTC or 32 ETH.
Most of us can’t hold both as the cost is over $90,000. So most of us have to make a choice. Who do you think will win, bitcoin or ethereum? Let’s find out.
Advantages of Buying 32 ETH
This argument starts with the fact we cover altcoins here.
- King of Alts
We aren’t called Bitcoin Buzz, but Altcoin Buzz. So, 32 ETH is the amount you need if you want to run your own validator. That would increase your returns too.
- Cost/Value
Next, 32 ETH costs more than 1 BTC. Right now, at $1865, 32 ETH costs $59,680. Bitcoin’s current price is $27,625. This means 32 ETH costs twice as much as 1 Bitcoin. Does that mean ETH is more valuable? Or more scarce? Not necessarily.
Ethereum has almost 227 million unique addresses. The circulating supply is 120.4 million. That means the average holding per address is 0.52 ETH. And like many projects, they are top-heavy. ETH is more top-heavy than most.
The top 100 holders hold 39% of all the ETH. That means many of these 227 million holders hold very small amounts of ETH.
10/ In the previous quarter, @Binance consolidated its wallets, which led to a spike in the number of active wallets.
As a result, the average number of daily active addresses on #Ethereum saw a decline of 4% to 425K. pic.twitter.com/suMZSTlv61
— Messari (@MessariCrypto) April 21, 2023
- Ecosystem
On the ecosystem, Ethereum wins hands down. Way more apps, protocols, volume, and fees than Bitcoin’s ecosystem. Does this high concentration of ETH ownership concern you? Or not? Let us know in the comments below.
Disadvantages of Buying 32 ETH
Now for the anti-Ethereum side. Despite being #2 overall and the clear leader in DeFi and NFTs, Ethereum still sucks to use. And I am DEFINITELY NOT exaggerating when saying that. It could very easily lose its #2 position:
- Cosmos has better-integrated apps and protocols.
- BNB Smart Chain is faster with lower fees.
- Bitcoin is more secure.
- Solana is gaining ground fast on NFTs.
- Polygon’s user experience exceeds Ethereum in every way.
- ETH has near total reliance on L2s for using apps.
Ethereum’s place as the silver to Bitcoin’s gold is far from secure. Do you know what else never happens on Bitcoin? This. Last week, it was this $25 million exploit by someone attacking MEV bots. Ethereum is full of hacks, exploits, and security leaks.
That is the reality. And that NEVER happens with Bitcoin or its ecosystem. Never has. Extremely difficult to do with such high hash rates. Ethereum leads now but it has LOTS of competition.
Polygon, which has its own sidechain and L2 solutions for ETH, just passed Ethereum in a number of daily active addresses for the first time. Ethereum is far more centralized than people want to admit.
Daily Active Addresses within Ethereum's L2s
Abritrum 24%
Optimism 2.6%
zkEVM 1.3%
zkSync 71% pic.twitter.com/WKlv6CwdmD— Emperor Osmo🧪 (@Flowslikeosmo) April 20, 2023
First, we have a high concentration of ownership as mentioned earlier. Then there is the 70% premine that took place at its creation. Lastly, we’ve already seen that the ETH Network can censor transactions at the US Government’s request. It is definitely not a censorship-resistant network. Governments don’t fear Ethereum. They collaborate with them.
Advantages of Buying 1 BTC
Most of us at Altcoin Buzz use some Ethereum or EVM app on a daily basis. We bet most of you do too.
 – ETH is the Decentralized King
But you know what? Governments don’t fear Ethereum. They don’t work to ban Ethereum. Only Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the biggest threat to government-issued money. And that should tell you something about its value, too. And how powerful it is.
Bitcoin is the King. It’s the most decentralized project and the only threat to government-issued money.
- Less Concentrated Ownership
Bitcoin’s ownership is in way more hands than Ethereum. There are 45.7 million holders of the 19.3 million Bitcoin in circulation. That means the average holder has 0.42 BTC. That’s more per average holder than Ethereum. And unlike Ethereum’s 39%, the top 100 Bitcoin holders only own 13.6%. That’s a huge difference.
All ownership and decentralization metrics are stronger and less concentrated for Bitcoin.
#EconWatch: As #ElSalvador adopts #Bitcoin, 5 other Latin American countries are considering similar initiatives. Like El Salvador, all of these countries score extremely poorly on global corruption indices. #BTC is highly correlated with high levels of corruption. pic.twitter.com/EGToWp2bPk
— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) June 26, 2021
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Institutions Prefer Bitcoin
Last fall leading into The Merge, Ethereum got much more institutional interest than usual. Especially since they can stake it easily on Coinbase or Binance and earn a rate like Treasuries on it.
But overall, institutions much prefer Bitcoin. To be fair, many are bullish on both. That said, there is more trading activity for Bitcoin. More companies have Bitcoin on their balance sheet. More than just Microstrategy’s 140,000 BTC.
Legendary VC investor and Bitcoin bull Tim Draper are telling his portfolio companies and making the general recommendation to hold at least 2 payrolls worth of cash in Bitcoin. That’s in the wake of US bank closures and systemic problems now coming to the surface. For the average American company, that’s equal to 1 month of all employee salaries.
Disadvantages of Buying 1 BTC
Now, the anti-BTC argument. While Layer 2 solutions like Stacks and Lightning Network are growing and adding more services, the biggest knock on Bitcoin is that its best utility is to HODL. Its opponents say that just holding and hoping it goes up is not a high utility for crypto.
First bridging #USDT from Eth to Stacks was a great experience and very smooth 🤗
Huge S/O to the whole @ALEXLabBTC Team for this amazing feature added to the ecosystem 🫡 pic.twitter.com/YGa3Q1af04
— Algorithm.btc (@godfred_xcuz) April 21, 2023
There’s no question that because its ecosystem is larger and everyone pays ETH for gas Ethereum has more general day-to-day utility right now. This map we are looking at is almost 2 yrs old and look how huge it is. It’s only larger now.
And if your favorite part of crypto is DeFi or NFTs or Games or Metaverse, then you probably favor ETH more than Bitcoin. Although Ordinals look like the real deal for Bitcoin.
The Decision
Both are getting more scarce. Bitcoin’s inflation is 1.67%. The next halving is ~12 months away. Ethereum’s inflation post – Merge is 0.88%.
On the other hand, Bitcoin is the most monetary, and money-like. Ethereum has the most protocols using it. So in the end, my own personal preference is that I would prefer to have.
I know what I choose. What did you decide?
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