Ethereum’s Ability to Attract Capital Comes Into Question as Price Plummets

For most assets, investors will swoop in during periods of decline to accumulate as much as possible while prices are low. It seems Ethereum bulls are getting excited about this prospect, but one analyst has advised them to cautiously manage their expectations.

Ethereum Bulls Shouldn’t Be Optimistic

Andrew Kang, a cryptocurrency analyst and former digital asset manager, questioned Ethereum’s ability to raise enough capital to keep the price up on Tuesday. He was replying to a post from SetProtocol’s Head of Product Marketing, Anthony Sassano, who jokingly revealed that he sought the permission of his fiancee to use part of their savings to buy more ETH.

Telling my fiance that I'm going to have to dip into our savings to buy more ETH – this is too good of a signal. https://t.co/ytjQQIfiVu

— Anthony Sassano | sassal.eth 🏴 (@sassal0x) December 17, 2019

Kang argued in a Twitter thread that based on the current price, it’s nearly impossible to find retail uses for Ethereum or have institutions deploy capital into it in the same way that they’ve rallied around Bitcoin.

Serious question for ETH bulls – where do you expect additional capital inflows to come from?

Retail? No
Shitcoin funds? No
ETH Maxis? Levered out
Institutions? Definitely not https://t.co/1qOXDH89Ri

— Andrew Kang (@Rewkang) December 17, 2019

Kang’s assertion is undoubtedly interesting. Ethereum hardly gets much love from crypto-accepting retail stores, as most of those that do accept cryptocurrency have chosen to accept Bitcoin. Institutional investors are also rather iffy on the asset. Many in the community see Ethereum’s difficult value proposition as a barrier to entry for institutions compared with BTC.

DeFi Growth and Bitcoin Halving

While Kang remains pessimistic about Ethereum’s hopes of a revival without a massive capital intervention, some observers believe the key is in the growth of its decentralized finance (DeFi) feature. Once the growth of ETH locked in DeFi matures, others will likely be lured back in. Others say it’s only normal that you can’t count on new capital inflows into Ethereum because there’s a wide consensus around Bitcoin being a safe(r) harbor when the market tanks. So, investors naturally won’t be mopping up as much ETH this time around. However, all of these assumptions could change after Bitcoin’s third halving next year. Expected to occur in May 2020 the halving will reduce the miners’ rewards by 50 percent. Some analysts have speculated that it could lead to smaller miners going out of business. Kang believes that the halving still won’t be able to save Ethereum, as miners who exit BTC won’t likely be able to shelter their wealth in Ethereum. The price of Ethereum continues to take a beating and it has now wiped out its yearly gains entirely — now trading lower than the price it held coming into 2019.