Spurred by Ethereum’s recent high-profile write up in the New York Times, Chris DeRose, Community Director at the Counterparty Foundation took to Twitter to vent his disbelief that Ethereum will amount to all its hype.

On DeRose’s personal Twitter page, he sent a tweet to Bitcoin beat writer Nathaniel Popper, the journalist who penned the NYT piece warning him that he should be wary to endorse the alt.currency as a “project” due to it only having hype behind it and no substance. Of course, a bold and contrarian statement such as this one didn’t go unheard in the world of social media others soon chimed in with their own opinions, notably defending Ethereum.

The momentum of Ethereum has been largely well received among those in the world of blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies. With the value of the alt. currency as a cryptocurrency exploding in recent months, it’s been an attractive investment alternative as Bitcoin’s price has conversely been in a bit of a slump as late.

Ethereum’s cryptocurrency value is only part of its allure to many enthusiasts, however, as it’s become increasingly popular as large industries and businesses have experimented with using its smart contract technology in real-world applications.

Apparently DeRose’s gripe is that he sees little intrinsic value in Ethereum, according to his tweets, in the nature of smart contracts and believes the “overhead” and complicated infrastructure to bolster such a technology isn’t likely. His Twitter argument consistent of a back and forth conversation primarily with Mark Wilcox, an Ethereum crowdsale investor and clear advocate of the project.

A highlight of DeRose’s main arguments against smart-contracts include:

No one needs smart-contracts.

He considers them expensive to produce and maintain.

Their logic can be performed better and cheaper by centralized servers.

DeRose’s involvement with Counterparty’s Bitcoin blockchain based financial payments protocol initiative likely has a lot to do with DeRose’s strong opinion of Ethereum. DeRose’s added that because of Counterparty’s inherent close ties with Bitcoin, it’s more likely to succeed, rather than the alt. currency which is a blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies completely outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

DeRose has gone on record previously, stating that smart contracts are “the future of blockchain,” however he’s believed even with Ethereum’s Turing completeness, they’re still far behind Bitcoin’s inherent security standards.

@mwilcox @nathanielpopper Maybe. But, counterparty *is* bitcoin. And most of counterparty deals merely with payments. — Chris DeRose (@derose) March 28, 2016

This isn’t the first internet beef that has sprung up between Counterparty and Ethereum, as other Counterparty advocates have come at Ethereum with negative comments in the past.

There’s been an ongoing narrative between the two sides regarding whether Ethereum can accomplish anything on its own blockchain with its own cryptocurrency that the same sort of technology couldn’t produce with the Bitcoin blockchain. It’s likely this won’t be the last public argument we’ll see on the topic in coming months at Ethereum continues to develop.

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