Bitcoin gave value to stocks, bonds and property. Bitcoin’s competitors gave value to Bitcoin.
There has yet to be a true competitor that gives value to Ethereum.

For something to be truly valuable, it must first be challenged by something attempting to replicate or improve upon its unique proposition. Competition is proof that a thing is worth striving to match, it validates existence through attempted imitation.

Today, nothing meaningfully competes with Ethereum on its own terms. Ethereum is, for now, competing against itself. It is only when other chains/protocols strive to perfect what Ethereum is already doing such as decentralisation, composability, security at scale, that the market will explicitly signal Ethereum is of value. Competition proves the existence of something being the best.

In philosophical value theory, uniqueness isn't intrinsic it is simply a fact of existence, it’s a reflection of perception. Something is unique because enough observers agree it stands apart, not because it demands to be recognised. Ethereum exists today in that space: accepted, yet often underappreciated, precisely because its model has not yet been fully understood, nor successfully copied in its entirety.

If I asked you what asset has a 21 million limited supply and a halving cycle every four years, you'd likely say Bitcoin. But Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and other Bitcoin derivatives share those same design features.
Their existence doesn’t diminish Bitcoin, it cements Bitcoin’s category as a new form of money, while proving that human perception, more than pure technicality, sustains Bitcoin's dominance.

Bitcoin wasn’t dismissed early on because of its design or utility, it was dismissed because of human perception. Stocks, bonds, property are asset classes that carry the weight of institutional memory and social trust. Bitcoin gave those assets something to be compared against, and in doing so, inadvertently validated traditional finance, even as Bitcoin disrupted it.

Like Bitcoin before it, Ethereum is under-recognised not due to flaws in its design, valuation models, or user adoption, but because true competition has yet to materialise. As other blockchains inevitably strive to match Ethereum’s achievements in throughput, scaling, security, and token design, they will not undermine its position. They will validate Ethereum's existence.

The act of competitors building out more validator sets, designing deflationary token mechanics, scaling through Layer 2 solutions, all mirror Ethereum’s vision.
Each iteration unintentionally says: Ethereum’s path was right all along.

Ethereum is so foundational that even attempts to improve upon it only reinforce its direction. This is the hidden validation the market has not yet fully priced in: Ethereum’s uniqueness lies not in its current superiority, but in the inevitable future where it will be judged, and strengthened by competition still to come.

Perhaps it’s ironic that these thoughts come to me now, at what could be a historically low ETH/BTC ratio, with Ethereum trading around $1,799, nearly -78% down against Bitcoin. But maybe that’s exactly why it its worth writing about it.

What’s captured my attention isn’t just price, but pattern. I’m noticing that more blockchains, and the communities around them are starting to shift focus. There’s less emphasis on hype cycles and more on durability, decentralisation, and credible neutrality. In other words, they’re beginning to optimise for the same long-term properties Ethereum has pursued from the start.

According to the lens of philosophical value theory, when others begin to mimic a system’s traits, it’s often a signal that the original idea was directionally correct. That’s what gives me confidence in Ethereum, not as a trade, but as a structural bet on what the future of digital value infrastructure looks like.

My own view is that the bottom may have formed closer to the $1,400 level, when fears from broader macro themes, like political instability or global trade friction, posed less existential risk to crypto than, say, the USDC de-peg event two years ago, which Ethereum absorbed and moved past.

Since then, ETH’s supply has been net deflationary since the merge up until recently 05 February 2025 (source: Ultrasound Money) . To me, those ingredients, sharp drawdown, deflationary tokenomics, and growing alignment from other chains, create a reasonable thesis for asymmetric upside over the next 1–2 years for Eth.

This isn’t financial advice, and I don’t know the future will look like tbh. But imo Ethereum seems under-recognised, underappreciated, and quietly laying the foundation for something that won’t need attention in order to win, just time.

Swiss,

**images are rough depictions of a high level view of each ecosystem - this summary may not account for each individual nuance protocol/scaling solution/user infra being built in each ecosystem of each chain that is wildly consensus or in use.

Bitcoin gave value to stocks, bonds and property. Bitcoin’s competitors gave value to Bitcoin.
There has yet to be a true competitor that gives value to Ethereum.

For something to be truly valuable, it must first be challenged by something attempting to replicate or improve upon its unique proposition. Competition is proof that a thing is worth striving to match, it validates existence through attempted imitation.

Today, nothing meaningfully competes with Ethereum on its own terms. Ethereum is, for now, competing against itself. It is only when other chains/protocols strive to perfect what Ethereum is already doing such as decentralisation, composability, security at scale, that the market will explicitly signal Ethereum is of value. Competition proves the existence of something being the best.

In philosophical value theory, uniqueness isn't intrinsic it is simply a fact of existence, it’s a reflection of perception. Something is unique because enough observers agree it stands apart, not because it demands to be recognised. Ethereum exists today in that space: accepted, yet often underappreciated, precisely because its model has not yet been fully understood, nor successfully copied in its entirety.

If I asked you what asset has a 21 million limited supply and a halving cycle every four years, you'd likely say Bitcoin. But Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and other Bitcoin derivatives share those same design features.
Their existence doesn’t diminish Bitcoin, it cements Bitcoin’s category as a new form of money, while proving that human perception, more than pure technicality, sustains Bitcoin's dominance.

Bitcoin wasn’t dismissed early on because of its design or utility, it was dismissed because of human perception. Stocks, bonds, property are asset classes that carry the weight of institutional memory and social trust. Bitcoin gave those assets something to be compared against, and in doing so, inadvertently validated traditional finance, even as Bitcoin disrupted it.

Like Bitcoin before it, Ethereum is under-recognised not due to flaws in its design, valuation models, or user adoption, but because true competition has yet to materialise. As other blockchains inevitably strive to match Ethereum’s achievements in throughput, scaling, security, and token design, they will not undermine its position. They will validate Ethereum's existence.

The act of competitors building out more validator sets, designing deflationary token mechanics, scaling through Layer 2 solutions, all mirror Ethereum’s vision.
Each iteration unintentionally says: Ethereum’s path was right all along.

Ethereum is so foundational that even attempts to improve upon it only reinforce its direction. This is the hidden validation the market has not yet fully priced in: Ethereum’s uniqueness lies not in its current superiority, but in the inevitable future where it will be judged, and strengthened by competition still to come.

Perhaps it’s ironic that these thoughts come to me now, at what could be a historically low ETH/BTC ratio, with Ethereum trading around $1,799, nearly -78% down against Bitcoin. But maybe that’s exactly why it its worth writing about it.

What’s captured my attention isn’t just price, but pattern. I’m noticing that more blockchains, and the communities around them are starting to shift focus. There’s less emphasis on hype cycles and more on durability, decentralisation, and credible neutrality. In other words, they’re beginning to optimise for the same long-term properties Ethereum has pursued from the start.

According to the lens of philosophical value theory, when others begin to mimic a system’s traits, it’s often a signal that the original idea was directionally correct. That’s what gives me confidence in Ethereum, not as a trade, but as a structural bet on what the future of digital value infrastructure looks like.

My own view is that the bottom may have formed closer to the $1,400 level, when fears from broader macro themes, like political instability or global trade friction, posed less existential risk to crypto than, say, the USDC de-peg event two years ago, which Ethereum absorbed and moved past.

Since then, ETH’s supply has been net deflationary since the merge up until recently 05 February 2025 (source: Ultrasound Money) . To me, those ingredients, sharp drawdown, deflationary tokenomics, and growing alignment from other chains, create a reasonable thesis for asymmetric upside over the next 1–2 years for Eth.

This isn’t financial advice, and I don’t know the future will look like tbh. But imo Ethereum seems under-recognised, underappreciated, and quietly laying the foundation for something that won’t need attention in order to win, just time.

Swiss,

**images are rough depictions of a high level view of each ecosystem - this summary may not account for each individual nuance protocol/scaling solution/user infra being built in each ecosystem of each chain that is wildly consensus or in use.