1/ As always I absolutely loved @twobitidiot, @ericturnr, and the rest of the Messari team's yearly theses, but that won't stop me from dunking on the Ethereum section. I'll start by saying this is well worth reading and I agree with the vast majority of it, so check it out. https://twitter.com/twobitidiot/status/1336319706748350464

2/ @RyanWatkins_ / @WilsonWithiam's rebuttal will probably be much better than mine so read that when it comes out too. And @twobitidiot, I hope you read this because I want to convince you that you actually do believe in Ethereum, you have just been bamboozled.

3/ History: In this one Ryan argues that Bitcoin has fewer substitutes than Ethereum so it hurts its monetary premium. He is also bullish on ZEC's monetary premium. But ZEC is a replacement for Bitcoin, it has the same function set except that it can also do private transactions.

4/ It also has insane inflation (though it does have a supply cap of questionable sustainability). So why be bullish on it? You have to believe in the 'utility' of private transactions.

5/ Ethereum has this too. The point that you don't need ETH to do them applies just as much to ZEC as it does to ETH. The main point here is that ETH has a level of utility that is simply incomparable to ZEC, so if you are bullish on ZECs utility you should be mega-bull on ETH.

6/ Institutional Mirage - Strong Hands: All of these sections essentially make the same point, people want Bitcoin today, they don't sell it, it's in higher demand, etc. etc. I agree with that point; I have to because it is objectively true, Bitcoin has a higher market cap.

7/ The problem is simply that it is unimaginative. We always talk about how 1 year in crypto is 10 years in the regular world, and that's because things radically change every year. So far, every year that radicle change has been on Ethereum. More users=more fees=more ETH demand

8/ Because of this it's hard to imagine an outcome where ETH does not 'eventually' outpace Bitcoin in market cap. That's my biggest issue; the use of the phrase "it will never eclipse BTC". BTC is going to have to start winning some years (in metrics other than market cap).

9/ The report also lets Bitcoin off the hook for arguments that it grills Ethereum for. Competition for instance; there was a time when Bitcoin's dominance in the currency domain was far less obvious than it is today, but it shook off all the competition.

10/ This should be easier for Ethereum considering the network effects of interoperability. Ethereum's working product dominance > dev mindshare dominance > market cap dominance.

11/ What really irks me though is this: "doesn’t really matter, though, if BTC is overtaken by ETH,
we can pack our toys and go home because ETH will not have the memetic resilience or robust
sovereign-grade security model to compete as crypto’s primary value store."

12/ I just... don't understand how someone can believe something like this. ETH is not Bitcoin, it doesn't have to compete on the same merits as Bitcoin to be successful. It doesn't have to be a meme. In fact, nearly all of the most valuable assets are not memes. Most are useful.

13/ If (big if) Ethereum became the basis for the internet of value, do people really believe that its native asset won't be successful? and why do non-technical people believe that Bitcoin (the first attempt at this tech) is the only system that can be sovereign-grade resistant?

14/ All this said, I think the theses are appropriate for 2021, they just aren't framed as 2021 takes. ETH likely will not overtake Bitcoin next year, and many of the same trends wrt investor mindshare and market cap will continue. I'm looking further ahead.