Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), the two highest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization are always contested. With the start of the new year, the first debate arose comparing the 21 million capped supply of BTC and the deflated supply of ETH and which of the two is the better money.
An Ethereum-focused Twitter handle called ‘ultra sound money’ compared the supply of crypto-issues and suggested that “if BTC is the supply that is masked by sound then ETH that reduces the supply is ultrasound.”
if closed-supply BTC sound
reducing the supply of ETH is ultra sound pic.twitter.com/L2tsFzPQ7q
– ultrasound money (@ultrasoundmoney) January 15, 2023
The comparison between the two does not sit well with Bitcoin supporters who are quick to point out that their confidence comes from the credibility of monetary policy and not change. Dan Held, a popular Bitcoin supporter pointed come out flawed in the argument and note that the constant change has less credibility. He said:
“Time to build trust with humans, it’s not all about code. According to your logic, if we create another crypto with more deflation, it will be “noise”.
Another Bitcoin supporter was asked the credibility of Ethereum’s monetary policy, warning that the same monetary policy has “changed at least 11 times in 7 years.” On the other hand, Bitcoin has not changed its monetary policy in the second time that eth has existed.
Ether became deflated in August 2021 with the introduction of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) – 1559. The upgrade introduced a burning mechanism that automatically burned a portion of the transaction fee that reduced the overall circulating supply of ETH.
In response to Alex Gladstein’s argument that “admins” can change Ethereum’s monetary policy arbitrarily, Independent Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano stated that every change in the Ethereum network has been approved by thousands of node operators managed by community members.
The term “admin” implies that there is a small group with superuser powers that can change things on Ethereum that are actually fake and have been proven to be fake.
You can believe what you want about the sound money vs ultra sound money debate.
— sassal.eth (@sassal0x) January 16, 2023
Leo Glisic, founder of the Maitri network said if ETH is good money now but BTC won’t close until 2140.
Bitcoiners’ argument that the network’s monetary policy can be tweaked several times makes it less credible coming from the past itself. Bitcoin has faced similar monetary changes and native code tweaking in the past as well. The most important came in the era of 2017 when there was a huge demand to increase the Bitcoin block size to accommodate more transactions per block and make it more scalable.
related: Bitcoin is out of ‘fear’ for the first time in nine months
The majority of the Bitcoin community remains against changes to Satoshi Nakamoto’s original code. As a result, the crypto ecosystem saw a hard fork in 2017 leading to the formation of Bitcoin Cash (BCH), a cryptocurrency with a block size of 8 MB against BTC 1 MB. However, BCH is currently ranked 26th with very little chain development and is currently trading at 97% of its all-time low.