Sam Bankman-Fried, a former wall street trader and MIT grad who founded Hong Kong-based crypto exchange FTX, doesn’t believe Ethereum displacing Bitcoin.
What Happened: Bankman-Friend, who at 29 years of age is one of the industry’s youngest billionaires, said he would be surprised if Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) did, in fact, overtake Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC).
“It’s hard for me to see Ether displacing Bitcoin, although I could be wrong there,” he said in an interview with Business Insider.
His reasoning as to why it’s unlikely stems from Bitcoin’s “massive advantage” of being the first and agreed upon cryptocurrency.
Moreover, Bankman-Fried finds that for all its diverse use cases, Ethereum has its own issues with scaling, which is going to hold it back.
Why It Matters: Year-to-date, Bitcoin’s 93% gain has paled compared to Ethereum’s 450% increase in price.
Ethereum’s market cap also touched $500 billion for the first time, reinforcing the belief that it could soon catch up with Bitcoin and even surpass the leading digital asset in the near future.
Flippening in the next month or I repeat this tweet until I’m right
— ∞ CO฿IE (@CryptoCobain) May 13, 2021
See also: Here’s Why JPMorgan Believes Ethereum Will Continue Growing Faster Than Bitcoin
Crypto market proponents refer to the hypothetical event that Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin as “the flippening,” and the theory has been supported by several prominent names in the industry, including Mark Cuban.
Price Action: At the time of writing, Bitcoin was trading at $50,884, recovering from the day’s low of $47,084.
Ethereum was trading over 12% higher over a period of 24-hours, hitting a high of $4,121.
In terms of market dominance, Bitcoin accounted for 40.78% of the crypto market, while Ethereum’s dominance was at 20.13%, according to CoinMarketCap.