The game of musical chairs continues, with Arthur Hayes selling off Solana (SOL) as it surges to new heights, and shifting towards accumulating Ethereum (ETH). SOL reached $99, marking its highest value in the past 20 months. The market capitalisation of this blockchain which boasts an off-switch, hit a staggering $33.7 billion as its venture-capitalist backers worked tirelessly to prop the coin up, despite its lacklustre fundamentals.
Indeed, Solana has a history of going offline, and Arthur Hayes might have front-ran this eventuality by swiftly capitalising on the hype-driven surge, and shifting to the household Ethereum name. Renowned for his memefied and sarcastic market insights, Hayes now anticipates ETH to hit $5,000 sometime in the foreseeable future.
Fam … I have a confession to make.
I received a msg from the Lord while meditating. He said dump that Sam coin POS, and profess your love for Archangel Vitalik.
So I dumped $SOL, and bot more $ETH.$ETH = $5,000shifting
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) December 22, 2023
Despite his focus on Ethereum, Hayes also remains a supporter of Bitcoin, expecting it to move beyond $70,000 in 2024. True to his writings, Hayes has also turned his attention to meme coins such as PEPE, launched in April 14, which has even ben listed on exchanges such as Binance.
As with all those attempting to read the tea leaves, Hayes’ wild predictions come with a caveat; they don’t always come true. In fact, his previous BTC prediction in April 2020 was widely off the mark. At the time, Hayes cautioned about a 57% price drop, which did not materialise. To the contrary, price surged 28% to $9,000 in three months.
His prediction for ETH reaching $5,000 post-merge could also fall short, however, with ‘the merge’ event turning Ethereum into a risky proof-of-stake blockchain. Proof of stake chains are a dime in a dozen and have no associated cost of production, but are merely an adapted version of current central banking systems with a heavy reliance on stakeholder trust.
The value proposition for ETH has therefore been thrown into question, with the protocol relying on network effects and its market position alone over fundamentals.
Recently, ETH ominously fell below the 200-weekly exponential moving average (EMA) versus BTC. Prominent trader and analyst Peter Brandt suggested that ETH could even witness a sharp decline which might see the asset fall sharply below 3-digits in dollar terms.
Meanwhile, network data points for Litecoin have been on a relentless uptrend. Most recently, LTC new addresses, active addresses, and transactions have eclipsed those of BTC and ETH, as noted by Litecoin user David Schwartz.
Interesting past 2 months.
Litecoin seems to have come alive not only in its @Grayscale LTCN offering, but also LTC has exploded in new addresses, active addresses, and transactions per day (eclipsing both BTC & ETH on 12/20)
Ordinals on LTC are also > 9 million & counting… pic.twitter.com/YZB7EnWNSe
— David Schwartz (aka – Dasch) (@DaddyCool1991) December 21, 2023
Regardless, Hayes’ move from SOL to ETH in the midst of a price surge has raised eyebrows, and brought into question whether robust network data points are merely an afterthought for entrenched financial interests. After all, if Soylana existed a decade ago it would not have lasted a couple of months, let alone a couple of years after having demonstrated that it is merely a venture-capitalist plaything, by design.
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