Crypto 2022 Feature Sneak Peek: Where Is Ethereum Going?

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Previewing what could be in store for Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) in 2022, Fool.com contributor Chris MacDonald and Eric Bleeker of The Motley Fool discuss the prospects for this megacap cryptocurrency. This discussion was seen on the December 15 episode of “The Crypto Show” on Backstage Pass.

Eric Bleeker: Second in our 2022 sneak peek series that I alluded to earlier, we would be discussing Ethereum more. Its current price is around $ 3,800. That’s a market cap of $ 450 billion in the bullish case.

Again, Cathie Wood says it’s even more undervalued than Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), implying it’s even more undervalued than – what was Bitcoin, a 10x? [laughs] – this price model. The bull affair: New worlds to build on top of it, that is to say this year, we have seen a major emergence of DeFi [decentralized finance] and NFT [non-fungible tokens]. What could be the future breakthroughs built on Ethereum?

For my money, this would probably be a few metavers and real gaming apps, as I discussed on last week’s show.

In the case of the bear, the still high gas prices, which are essentially transaction costs, open the door to competition. And it’s still in the process of massive transitions in its underlying technology, which Chris just hinted at in the mining answers, that Ethereum continues to work towards moving from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, which is not a trivial undertaking.

Chris, I just worked it out. What are you looking for in 2022 with Ethereum?

Chris MacDonald: Prepare really well. In fact, you stole my thunder over there with the metaverse. [laughs]

Ethereum, as I mentioned before, is the Layer 1 building block for a lot of these very popular DeFi projects, and whether it’s NFT or Metaverse. There is a wide range of opportunities for investors – and users, really – in the crypto world thanks to Ethereum.

When investors think of Ethereum, you have to go back to the early days of its inception with smart contracts and possibly be the first and largest network to integrate smart contracts.

It really paved the way for decentralized finance and those real world use cases made possible in the crypto world. You don’t really see this with Bitcoin. Perhaps as a store of value you can argue that Bitcoin is the best bet. As a utility store, Ethereum may still be the best dog for a reason.

I think the upcoming update, which in theory would move it to a proof-of-stake platform and lower its costs, would speed up the platform, the network – there are risks with that as well. So, like you mentioned, you put it under the bear case. There are bullish and bearish aspects.

But one of the things people will be looking at is how this hard fork actually goes. Because there have been issues with previous hard forks in the past. There is still some concern about how everything will ultimately turn out next year.

This article represents the opinion of the author, who may disagree with the “official” recommendation position of a premium Motley Fool consulting service. We are motley! Challenging an investment thesis – even one of our own – helps us all to think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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