Peter Brandt, a market veteran who has been trading since the 1970s, isn’t mincing words. He’s been upping the ante on the Ethereum bashing lately, calling it “worthless junk.” Now, Brandt’s been around enough market cycles that most of us have notched that many birthdays (insert appropriate age here), so his words hold a lot of weight. On this one, his understanding is too limited. In taking such a myopic look at the issue, he completely misses the larger picture. Is Ethereum perfect? Absolutely not. “Worthless junk? That’s pushing it don’t you think?

High Gas Fees: A Solved Problem?

Brandt's primary beef seems to be with Ethereum's infamous gas fees. And he’s not wrong – paying exorbitant fees to move your crypto is a completely unacceptable user experience. That’s equivalent to paying more for the delivery of a pizza than the actual pizza! The claim that this is an unsolvable problem is just wrong.

Ethereum's developers aren't sitting idle. Layer-2 scaling solutions such as Optimism, Arbitrum and zk-rollups are already aggressively cutting these fees. Consider them like express lanes on the Ethereum highway, dramatically cutting down traffic and expenses. Are they perfect yet? No. But they are maturing quickly and even in their current state they create a much better experience. To dismiss Ethereum today simply based on gas fees would be akin to dismissing the internet back in 1995 because dial-up was moving too slowly. You’re looking at a short-term constraint and missing the future opportunity.

And here’s the surprising link – think back to when we first got mobile phones. Brick-sized devices with intermittent coverage and outrageous connection fees. Did we throw them on the scrap heap and declare them to be “worthless junk? No, instead, we recognized the promise of everywhere communication and, in doing so, narrowed our horizon. With all its scaling solutions, Ethereum is headed down that same path.

Complexity Undermines Mass Adoption?

Another criticism Brandt levels is Ethereum's complexity. And again, he has a point. Navigating the world of DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs can feel like trying to assemble IKEA furniture with a vague instruction manual. It's daunting, even for tech-savvy individuals.

This complexity is decreasing. Developer tools are increasingly gaining user-friendly experience and interfaces, and the experience is only getting better. Consider why all this complexity is necessary. It's the price of innovation. Ethereum is more than just a cryptocurrency, it’s a platform for building decentralized applications – a different kind of internet, as the saying goes. That sort of ambition requires complexity, at least in the early going.

Consider this: the early internet was incredibly complex. You had to learn a bunch of arcane commands just to send an email. Now, even my grandma can use Facebook. Remember, complexity is a stage—not a permanent condition.

The complexity argument misses the most important part. Besides, much of the innovation that crypto proposes as the alternative largely hinges on Ethereum. It’s the same technology that’s providing the foundation for DeFi, NFTs and the Metaverse to be built on top of. Dismissing Ethereum's complexity is like dismissing the internal combustion engine because it's more complicated than a horse and buggy. You're missing the revolutionary potential.

Utility? More Than Meets the Eye

Brandt’s most damaging claim, though, is the assertion that Ethereum have no utility. He’s referred to it as a “completely broken utility token.” This is where I believe he’s truly lost the thread.

What is utility? Is it just about facilitating transactions? For some cryptocurrencies, maybe. But Ethereum is about so much more than a currency. It's a platform for building decentralized applications. It’s the promise of decentralized technology. It is the engine that powers DeFi, enabling anyone anywhere to lend, borrow, and trade assets without intermediaries. But it’s the infrastructure that NFTs rest on, providing artists and creators more options to monetize their work. It’s the backbone of the Metaverse, powering large-scale, immersive digital environments where users interact, play, learn and transact.

  • DeFi: Lending, borrowing, trading, yield farming.
  • NFTs: Digital art, collectibles, gaming assets.
  • Metaverse: Virtual worlds, digital identities, decentralized commerce.

These aren’t just industry buzzwords, but real applications providing real utility. And they're all being built on Ethereum. By focusing too much on Ethereum’s limitations, Brandt misses the big play of Ethereum’s potentially transformative power.

Consider the nascent days of the personal computer revolution. Many people dismissed them as expensive toys. But they were wrong. The PC changed the way we worked, interacted, and enjoyed our lives. Ethereum could do the same for money, culture, and for national borders.

Ethereum is facing challenges. There's no denying that. Dismissing it as “worthless junk” ignores that it has a very impressive $200 billion market cap. It further overlooks our talented developers’ community and the golden developer opportunity we possess. Peter Brandt is the industry’s most coveted and respected market beater. Even the smartest people sometimes forget to see the forest through the trees. Ethereum isn’t ideal—it’s a work in progress—but it’s certainly not garbage. It's a work in progress, a revolution in the making, and it deserves a more nuanced assessment. That’s one of the hardest utilities to ignore the future being built on Ethereum. With the House in recess, you might think that this political drama is over…but it’s not!