A reader asked the following question in the comments:

Do you still believe that the total market capitalization of ETH will surpass the total market capitalization of Bitcoin at some point in the future?

Yes, I still believe that the total market capitalization of ETH will surpass the total market capitalization of Bitcoin at some point in the future.

My assumptions and logic are the same as what I've shared before:

I believe that public blockchains based on blockchain technology will become platforms that support a brand-new economic system, and I believe that the total value that this platform can support in the future may exceed the value created by today's human society, so I think there must be such a public chain.

For a public chain to be able to support such an ecosystem, it must have the indispensable characteristics of decentralization, censorship resistance, and security, and it must also be Turing-complete.

Currently, I believe that only ETH can meet these conditions, although it still has many problems and is constantly criticized.

According to the current token economic mechanism of ETH, ETH is able to capture the ecological value supported by ETH (including Layer 2, Layer 3, and even more layers of expansion).

Although currently Layer 2 expansions are capturing most of the economic value in this ecosystem, I think the fundamental reason is that the overall economic scale is still not large enough.

The reason why the economic scale is not large enough is that there is too little original creation on-chain, which I have repeatedly shared in previous articles.

But I believe that this ecosystem will definitely take off in the future, and ETH will definitely capture the ecological value.

Since ETH can capture the ecological value, and the ecological value will continue to expand, the market capitalization of ETH may surpass the market capitalization of Bitcoin.

The value of Bitcoin relies on consensus, and it is similar to gold. It will definitely rise in the future, but as it reaches a certain height, the growth rate will most likely become smaller and smaller, and may even approach a certain value infinitely.

But the value of ETH is driven by the economic ecosystem, and theoretically it can develop eternally and expand infinitely, without an upper limit on its growth.

The example of gold may better illustrate this pattern.

The withdrawal of the gold standard from history is a very typical case.

Before the de facto gold standard was effective, the economic development of human society for thousands of years was sufficient to be measured by gold, or in other words, the gold held by human beings was sufficient to encompass all the value created.

But after the Industrial Revolution, especially in the modern era, the development of human society has been exponential, and the pace of value creation by human society has far exceeded the rate of gold mining.

At this time, if we still use gold to mechanically bind the value of currency, to forcibly restrict the issuance of currency, it will cause deflation, damage the economy, and seriously constrain human development.

Take Bitcoin as an example.

Just within our own ecosystem, I believe many people are firmly convinced that the market capitalization of Bitcoin will surpass that of gold in the not-too-distant future, right?

But how long is the history of Bitcoin?

How long is the history of gold being discovered?

The history of Bitcoin is not even a fraction of the history of gold.

But this brand-new thing has created such a brilliant value in such a short time, isn't this a living case of the development of human society and human technology?

Since the development of the economy and the value created by human society must inevitably break free from the constraints of gold and exceed the total market capitalization of gold, why can't the total market capitalization of ETH, which can support the on-chain economy, surpass the total market capitalization of "digital gold"?

So I still believe in this, and I think that day may not be too far away.