There’s a huge buy wall, DeFi is exploding, Ethereum can now scale, and Crypto Twitter is seriously asking if the 2020s will belong to Ether.

Bitcoin was easily the best performing asset of the past decade, shooting up in value somewhere in the region of 60,000 to 90,000 percent.

Ethereum lagged however *only* increasing 18,000 percent.

On the upside, that means there’s still a lot of upside left for the number two cryptocurrency

It’s currently trading for $145, while Bitcoin is trading at $8150.

Ethereum has roughly five times the supply of Bitcoin meaning that in relative terms Ethereum is trading 90% below Bitcoin and would need to increase 1000% from this point to draw level with Bitcoin.

People are (once again) seriously talking about that happening.

This chart must not be ignored. pic.twitter.com/tjzEo6VFwT — CryptoWolf (@IamCryptoWolf) January 10, 2020

Short term and long term gains

In the short term, there are reports this morning of a huge buy wall of 35,000 ETH on OKex, which NewsBTC says could “spark a parabolic rally” up to $280.

But in the longer term, the ‘flippening’ could still happen

Digital currency analyst CryptoWolf predicts “The investment of this decade will be Ethereum” and tweeted a chart showing similarities between Bitcoin’s price movements and Ethereum’s.

“This chart must not be ignored” he wrote.

Past performance is no indication of future returns, and a vague similarity between two charts hardly means any correlation will hold in future.

But if Ethereum can pull off its ambitious Ethereum 2.0 roadmap, then the sky is the limit for the smart contract platform.

It’s most recent upgrades have already paved the way for 2000 to 3000 transactions per second.

The move to Proof of Stake will allow Eth 2 to scale massively – from 15-30 transactions per second to tens of thousands – and pave the way for Ethereum to become the world’s leading blockchain.

Massive buy walls now on okex march2020 $ETH,

143 equiv in spot seems to be a very important re-accumulation level, around 35k ETH. https://t.co/U1us2S5c7S pic.twitter.com/TugD1KtvbR — Su Zhu (@zhusu) January 12, 2020

Eth 2.0 is basically a moonshot

The developers are essentially building an entirely new network from the ground up, using the lessons they’ve learnt from building the prototype.

Meanwhile Bitcoin development has stagnated under a ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ style ethos.

Unlike EOS, TRON or any of the other newer blockchains, Ethereum 2.0 will begin life with the all important network effects, projects and user base to allow it.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical, and Ethereum’s moonshot may still explode on the launch padd.

As Grant Hummer from Chromatic Capital wrote recently:

“Anyone who’s followed Ethereum for a while knows its development history is riddled with broken promises, missed deadlines, and spotty communication about its future plans. This has caused many to write Ethereum off as a failed experiment.

It’s a long and slow process (there’s too much money at stake to rush the transition.

Phase 0 was due to happen this quarter (it’s currently on testnet) although various pundits suggest it could take until the middle of end of the year (and some say that it may never work).

$80 trillion reasons for Ethereum to succeed

ConsenSys co founder Andrew Keys predicted this week that Serenity will happen this year.

“2020 will see Ethereum move stridently beyond Phase 0 of Ethereum 2.0, onto Phase 1 and the launch of shard chains.”

In the meanwhile Keys believes that layer two solutions “will turbocharge Ethereum” and bring it “towards 2.0 levels of scalability.”

While Bitcoin is a store of value and ‘hard money’, Keys says that Ethereum has “infinite use cases”.

It’s smart contracts and decentralised applications will be able to “trustlessly and digitally represent fiat, gold, software licenses, equity, debt, derivatives, loyalty points, reputation ratings, and much much more that we can’t even conceive of yet.”

He suggests this is market is worth more than $80 trillion – or ten times the value of Bitcoin’s much predicted replacement of gold.

Congested or just popular?

The surge in Decentralised Finance last year and the migration of Tether to Ethereum has seen the network struggle..

Weiss Crypto Ratings this week pointed to “chronic congestion on the Ethereum network” which many see as a bad thing.

However the company says it “shows worldwide adoption, the most important factor in the long term success of any crypto” and again stresses how crucial ETH 2.0 will be for the network.

Chronic congestion on the #Ethereum network shows worldwide adoption, most important factor in long-term success of any crypto. However, if nothing changes, #ETH users will start looking for alternatives. That's why ETH 2.0 is necessary for Ethereum to move forward.#crypto — Weiss Crypto Ratings (@WeissCrypto) January 10, 2020