OKCoin announced ETH trading would be launched at 12PM on 31st May. ETH price soared to over 0.1BTC/ETH on Poloniex, the exchange with the largest ETH trading volume at the moment. The statement of “ETH is better than BTC” leads to a question: will BTC be replaced by ETH?

On OKCoin’s announcement, the scaling issue of bitcoin network was mentioned and BTC was compared to “Nokia” and “IE Browser”.

“Given this opportunity, we implore BTC Core developers and relevant Miners to work together and resolve any outstanding technical issues, activate SegWit, and solve BTC’s scaling issues. Our industry and the history of technology offers us many warnings, whether it’s the IE browser or the Nokia mobile phone. No matter how dominant, how much market share you have, if you do not adopt the latest technology and fail to constantly improve on the core user value proposition, time will pass you by. Ultimately, digital asset exchanges around the world can only advocate for the best technology and aim to provide the best trading experience for our clients.”

Duan Xinxing, Executive President of 8btc, said:

Basically, exchanges are doing this out of two reasons:

1. Respect the choice of the market

2. The backlog in Bitcoin network scaling issue is annoying.

Meanwhile Yuanbao, one of the major altcoin exchanges in China, announced the de-listing of all BTC trade pairs on 30th May as a result of “low trading volume and to reduce the complexity and difficulty of management”. All BTC trade pairs were suspended and traders were advised to trade on other exchanges.

Yuanbao’s announcement on removal of BTC trade pairs

Such actions lead to the next question, will BTC eventually replaced by ETH? Obviously the bitcoin community and the blockchain community are reflecting on the change differently, which could be seen on the comments of a weibo posted by P2PBUCKS, senior developer of Bixin.

Don’t be fooled by the rise of ETH and XRP, these centralized stuff has no sustainable lives and couldn’t protect your property. If government wants, your ETH or Ripple wallet could be blocked any time. There will be no future for them.

The controversial statement stirred up the tension among various community members:

Weizhenping:

Please tell me how to freeze my ETH wallet? You ****!

P2PBUCKS (in response @Weizhenping )：

Where did ETC come from?

Jiangzhuo’er(in response @Weizhenping )：

Bitcoin is thriving because it’s the actual realization of money theory of Hayek’s and stands against government’s seigniorage and inflation tax. Currency that cannot stand against government shall not be addressed as decentralized currency.

Xrppayment:

You are too dump to trade digitial currency, tell me how to freeze XRP!

Jiangzhuo’er(in response @ Xrppayment ):

It’s simple. Government takes control of the Ripple Company and declares your coins are illegal then softfork to isolate your coins. Is that viable? But government cannot control Satoshi, even Core were deserted in the New York Consensus. Do you get it? Also, if you look back the history. BM inflates supply of BTS against community consensu, which led to the long-term setback of Bitshares.

Will BTC be replaced by ETH eventually? Please share us with your comments below.