ShapeShift’s Erik Voorhees: Bear markets are for builders

Erik Voorhees, CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform ShapeShift, has given his backing to the Bitcoin bear market.

He tweeted yesterday: “Bear markets are for builders. The calm, the quiet, the disillusionment. While the fickle and fair-weather peer around with nervous insecurity, the builders become the market’s foundation, preparing the mortar and stone of tomorrow’s towers.”

Ethereum all the way

Bitcoin will lose 50% of its cryptocurrency market share to Ethereum within five years. That’s according to Ian Mcloed of Thomas Crown Art, an art-tech agency that he established with art dealer, Stephen Howes.

Mcloed observes: “Turbulence is a regular, and sometimes welcome, feature of the crypto sector.  Therefore, the recent Ethereum rebound was, and is, inevitable. But not only do we think it will rebound considerably before the end of 2018, I believe that over the longer time it will significantly dent Bitcoin’s dominance. In fact, I think we can expect Bitcoin to lose 50% of its cryptocurrency market share to Ethereum, its nearest rival, within five years.”

Why so confident?

Ethereum offers more uses and solutions than Bitcoin, and it’s backed with superior blockchain technology, Mcloed argues. “This is why we use Ethereum’s blockchain in our art business,” he says.

“It has allowed us to create a system to use artworks as a literal store of value; it becomes a cryptocurrency wallet. It also solves authenticity and provenance issues – essential in the world of art. All our works of art are logged on the Ethereum’s blockchain with a unique ‘smART’ contract.”

He concludes: “Whilst there will continue to be peaks and troughs in the wider cryptocurrency market, due to its inherent strong core values, Ethereum will steadily increase in value in the next few years and beyond. Unless Bitcoin does more now to tackle scalability issues, and improves the technology it runs on, we cannot see how it can catch up with Ethereum over the next five years or so, when the crypto market will be even more mainstream.”

“Ethereum is already light years ahead of Bitcoin in everything but price – and this gap will become increasingly apparent as more and more investors jump into crypto.”