Bitcoin has long been, ever since blockchain and crypto became part of the financial markets conversation, the market leader, conversation starter, and dominant force by any metric.
On the other hand, however, ether and the Ethereum blockchain have rapidly moved up in terms of crypto valuation and the other applications that are developed on this blockchain.
While bitcoin has continuously continued to lead the wider crypto conversation, there is a case to be made that – in terms of applications and use cases – that ether and Ethereum are going to lead the next stage of blockchain implementation.
One of the most heated debates over the last several years is the back and forth about whether or not crypto can actually be used for transactions, versus simply being held as a speculative investment.
On top of not truly reflecting the functionality or use cases of many crypto, especially stablecoins developed to serve as a medium of exchange, the reporting and potential tax liabilities continue to discourage crypto to be used as a transactional medium.
Granted there are many of these new iteration of crypto that lack many of the attributes that make the more commonly known crypto so interesting to investors, but the market is expanding all the same.
As blockchain and crypto use cases continue to diversify, it does make sense that capital will flow to the platform that supports the plurality, if not majority, of these new applications.
; a specific product itself, or the network effects that those devices enable? There might be some disagreement over which is the proximate cause, but the consensus usually turns out to be that a major part in the success of firms like Apple are the network effects that serving as a robust platform provides.
There will surely be quite a bit of discussion and debate around what the recent bull run in ether means for the longer term maturation of the crypto and blockchain space.
I serve on the Advisory Board of the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance, where I chair the Accounting Work Group.