Mow: ‘I Feel Sorry for Ethereum’

Ethereum is currently facing a brutal reality check, and even some ardent Bitcoin maximalists now feel pity for their arch-rival as the ecosystem is struggling with massive institutional losses and various structural obstacles. 

“I hate Ethereum as much as the next Bitcoin Maximalist,” JAN3 CEO and prominent Bitcoiner Samson Mow recently shared on X. “But even I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for how bad things are for them now.”

This pitiful comment comes as Ethereum continues to trade sluggishly between $2,000 and $2,150. Capital is evidently rotating toward Bitcoin, with the closely watched ETH/BTC ratio plunging to a multi-year low of 0.027.

The double-edged sword of scaling

The network successfully scaled via Layer-2 (L2) rollups, and this achievement has introduced a phenomenon known as “L2 cannibalism.” User activity is now siloed across dozens of competing L2 networks like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. Due to this, the demand for base-layer gas fees drops. 

Many rollups still rely on centralized sequencers, and massive staking pools of the likes of Lido continue to dominate the base layer (hence, centralization concerns are alive and well). 

Ethereum is bleeding market dominance while struggling to defend its utility against other competitors. 

Tom Lee’s multi-billion dollar catastrophe 

Ethereum’s predicament is becoming painfully apparent on Wall Street. 

Tom Lee’s firm, BitMine Immersion Technologies, is currently shouldering catastrophic paper losses. 

The firm’s average acquisition cost sits around $3,850 per ETH. The firm is currently underwater to the tune of $8 billion in unrealized losses. 

Despite a sharply dropping stock price, BitMine continues to stubbornly buy the dip. 

A “smaller ship”

Amid the price depression and mounting criticism, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently introduced a new vision for the Ethereum blockchain. 

Buterin is stepping out of the limelight, rejecting any aspirations of being the “eternal steward” of the network. 

He has also explained that the Ethereum Foundation will be selling less ETH from now. 

He also insists Ethereum must become “impressive” in more fundamental ways, focusing on bug-free code, resilient chain consensus, and higher decentralization.