The landscape of digital assets that are investable for the long term isn't large. As in all systems where the barrier to entry is very low, it is relatively easy for people to spin projects in the crypto space. The result is a lot of noise and very little signal.
Bitcoin is signal, Ethereum is signal and some subset of NFTs is signal (when focused strictly on digital items living on-chain). That’s pretty much it for the digital assets that have a lot of potential for the long term.
The trick for them is to survive the bear market without losing too much steam. So far Ethereum is winning that game.
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Is Ethereum winning at this bear market?
Now I need to preface this with a warning. Chances are we have not seen the worst part of this bear market. Monetary policies around the world could get tighter than they already are. The global economy is likely to experience a recession this year or early next year. Financial markets might go through a meltdown phase at some point before things get better.
Based on the current trends in the economic data the odds are not in favour of a smooth recovery.
So the situation for Ethereum could go in any direction. But damn for now it is doing well.
Holding on to its gains
Bitcoin, Ethereum and pick your random tech stocks have been caught in a blood bath:
Ethereum went as low as -82% from the all-time high, still down -65% as of today.
Bitcoin went as low as -78% from the all-time high, still down -65% as of today.
Facebook went as low as -78% from the all-time high, still down -50% as of today.
So looking at the price in US$ in those macro conditions isn't going to tell us much that's specific to Ethereum. Pretty much all assets relying on high growth expectations have been hit very hard, so we are better serve by comparing “likes for likes”.
Now Bitcoin and Ethereum aren’t the same kind of assets, at all. Still they are as close as you get if you put them in the category of major crypto networks. So let’s not sweat those differences too much and simply compare Ethereum’s price against Bitcoin’s price.
Doing so paints a more optimistic picture.
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