# January 2023 - Best Opportunity Now By [StakeRocketPool](https://paragraph.com/@stakerocketpool) · 2023-01-17 --- Best Investment Opportunity in Crypto Right Now ----------------------------------------------- **TL:DR;** Acquiring Ethereum under $2,000 and staking via self-hosted nodes or LSDs are the best opportunities for long term web3 investors in Q1 2023. We believe staked Ethereum ($ETH) will become the default web3 interest rate in the next cycle. To diversify outside of staked Ethereum, we are acquiring RPL to include the leading decentralized staking-as-a-service provider for Ethereum today. Why staked $ETH? ---------------- Ethereum is the most profitable crypto ecosystem today with $3.3B in revenue generated over the last year. Ethereum and the Ethereum compatible (EVM) ecosystems have a competitive advantage with the most developers, total value locked (TVL), and infrastructure today to assist in onboarding the first billion users to web3. Ethereum’s upgrade to PoS last year helped turn $ETH into an ESG asset that is 99% more sustainable. ![https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1601017182854389760](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8f965e4aa7726ddc80d0c8c8c97c262363fcd67c5a122637568fb2447b0ceb52.png) https://twitter.com/sassal0x/status/1601017182854389760 With the upcoming ETH2 unlock in March (TBD official date), the demand for $ETH is expected to increase as risk prone investors now will have a guarantee they can get their locked $ETH back after ~27 days. The ‘risk-free’ variable rate of 2-11% return in $ETH for staking will help drive global investors to allocate to $ETH more than any other high-risk crypto asset in our view. Staked Ethereum’s yield (akin to a dividend), traditional financial metrics growth (ex. revenue & users), along with the ESG stamp (climate friendly approved) will attract large and small investors alike globally once more regulation is clear that Ethereum is a commodity and regulations are clear in each jurisdiction for how investors can get access to staked Ethereum. How to estimate $ETH’s value? ----------------------------- A valuation models for $ETH that could make sense one day for traditional investors is to compare Ethereum to a bond. With the bond analogy, the estimated value of $ETH could be easily be 6 to 7 figures according to [this analysis](https://cryptohayes.medium.com/five-ducking-digits-cd92a7ab72ce) by Arthur Hayes. Others, have compared $ETH to a FinTech payment network to find a suitable valuation model. ![@SpencerNoon](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/a8c58fc02a73c070461d0a23eec996616694a15bd0d38e8ca6a3cafc0618e562.png) @SpencerNoon According to some analysts, like Squish in this overly [bullish report](https://squish.substack.com/p/ethereum-the-triple-halving), we can use the payment networks of today as a comparison for Ethereum’s valuation. > **_If just last quarter (Q1 2021) Ethereum settled 6.4x the transactions of PayPal and PayPal’s market cap is $310B_**\*, then unless Ethereum extracts far less value from each transaction than Paypal, it **($ETH) should be worth at least $1.8T or around $16,000 as a base case**.\* Standard Chartered, a UK bank with $800 Billion under management, predicted in their cryptocurrency [research report](https://www.theblock.co/post/116763/standard-chartered-bitcoin-ether-btc-eth-price-projections) that Ethereum could be worth **“$26,000-$35,000 range”** over a longer term. Regardless of how traditional investors value Ethereum, the ecosystem’s revenue and growth will most likely manifest the ETH $10K meme sooner than most anticipate. Show me the Money - Ethereum’s Revenue is #1 -------------------------------------------- The largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin made $0 in revenue over the last year, while **Ethereum made $3.3B**. **The closest competitor, the #2 largest smart contract ecosystem (BSC), made only 1% of what Ethereum earned over the last year** at $39.6M. There is no comparison to any other cryptocurrency asset today in terms on demand for Ethereum’s services (access to the global value transfer network). ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/15976fae494fb333ba28f3a34474802c7eb3011bf7ae9373153961ed29a3127c.png) The largest competitors today based on revenue generated are NFT Marketplaces that run on top of Ethereum and other blockchains. See Token Terminal’s [Revenue dashboard](https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/metrics/revenue) to dive deeper into the most important baseline financial metric for web3 assets. Additional Ethereum metrics to follow are **active developers, TVL, and the price to sales (P/S) ratio.** Now stepping beyond Ethereum and to protocols and software communities making Ethereum staking easier. Diversify Staked Ethereum with Rocket Pool. ------------------------------------------- With conviction that staked Ethereum is the best opportunity right now, here is a simple way of putting the Pareto principle into action with 80% of the investment allocation put into staked Ethereum and the remaining 20% into Rocket Pool, a protocol supporting staked Ethereum and decentralized Ethereum. * **80% Staked Ethereum -** [Rocket Pool Mini Nodes](https://rocketpool.net/node-operators) and/or [rETH](https://stake.rocketpool.net/) * **20% LSDs** - Rocket Pool [RPL](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/rocket-pool) Learn about why you’d want to invest with Rocket Pool [via rETH here](https://mirror.xyz/stakerocketpool.eth/SgqYMyT5N0JOvU-hgW5dP_996ThMmTjRAy5XbI6tDes) instead of competitors like Lido or Coinbase. How Would we Execute this Opportunity? -------------------------------------- Good question. This is where the real work comes into to play from our perspective. To take advantage of this opportunity we would slowly deploy assets over 1-6 months based on market indicators. Once we have acquired our assets we would stake and sit for five to ten years. Yes, that’s right, locking up the assets until 2027 or 2033. What are the Risks of this Opportunity? --------------------------------------- The risks are abundant and the advice we live by is that if we can’t lose it we don’t invest it. Now ten years into the cryptocurrency markets, we believe a lot of the regulatory risks have been cleared away (but not yet put into law) and the major risks for us are smart-contract and hacker risks. The good news is that there now are insurance options now available via [Nexus Mutual](https://nexusmutual.io/) and others who are decreasing the smart-contract risk for DeFi investing. To decrease our hacker risks, we choose self-custody through hardware wallets. Operational security and self-custody are important to decrease the risks with Ethereum staking via self-custody. On the regulatory risk side of things, we are feeling pretty good that Ethereum will be declared a commodity by the US regulators, as hinted [here](https://cointelegraph.com/news/cftc-declares-ether-as-a-commodity-again-in-court-filing) and by experts [here](https://www.paradigm.xyz/2022/10/ethereums-new-staking-model-does-not-make-eth-a-security), when the US finalizes cryptocurrency regulation in 2024 or 2025. Our bet is that the US follows the EU with their [MiCA regulation](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CONSIL:ST_13198_2022_INIT&qid=1664971576874&from=EN) (which [has been postponed](https://decrypt.co/119377/vote-on-eu-landmark-crypto-bill-delayed-again), and excludes DeFi, but is progress to clear regulation). What’s the Net/Net? ------------------- > “You have to work hard in the dark to shine in the light.” – Kobe Bryant Consider diving deeper into the suggested resources here and decide if you have enough conviction to move forward with this opportunity. Most will pass up on this generational wealth opportunity because they didn’t work hard enough to learn and understand what’s really going on with cryptocurrencies behind the fraud, scams, and stories of the extremes on both sides of the story. We believe that compounding Ethereum via staking has the highest chance of return with the least risk in the entire Web3 and cryptocurrency public landscape. ![https://twitter.com/visualizevalue/status/1346476927159189506](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/cd4c1368276fcb797806e4e4959d8de336ca2a2bc33e4a82842ca2b17217cb0b.png) https://twitter.com/visualizevalue/status/1346476927159189506 We plan to earn with our mind and not just our time. We hope you consider doing your own research to see if staked Ethereum with Rocket Pool could be your answer to earning with your mind and not your time. Thanks for reading. This is not financial advice. This content is for informational purposes only. Nothing contained here constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by StakeRocketPool or DYOR Collective LLC to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. --- *Originally published on [StakeRocketPool](https://paragraph.com/@stakerocketpool/january-2023-best-opportunity-now)*