The bitcoin price is getting a lot of hype as of late given that it recently hit $30K for the first time in about 11 months. The news is no doubt good, but Ethereum is also doing quite well and hogging up the spotlight considering it just went through its Shapella upgrade, and now the co-founder of ETH Vitalik Buterin is confident another bull run is on its way.
Vitalik Buterin Has Big Plans for Ethereum
However, he’s adamant that crypto scaling issues need to be fixed before it arrives or else the bull run is likely to suffer. In a recent interview, Buterin commented:
If we dont fix scaling before the next bull run, people are going to be stuck paying $500 transaction fees.
It’s unclear if he’s planning for this to be part of the next big upgrade, which hasn’t officially been announced yet. Thus far, the currency has endured two major upgrades over the course of eight months. The first took place in September and was known as The Merge. It was a situation where the proof of work module that Ethereum relied on came to an end, and the currency moved to proof of stake.
This allowed the asset to become eco-friendlier in that it used far less energy, transactions became less expensive, and the network moved much quicker. With this new Shapella upgrade, the currency units that’ve been staked all this time are suddenly available for withdrawal. Buterin continued his discussion by stating:
The Shapella upgrade closes the loop on some things that are part of the PoS [proof of stake] transition but did not make it in time for The Merge, withdrawals obviously being really important. The immediate next focus after this… is going to be scaling.
Could Bigger Investors Get Involved?
The Shapella upgrade is getting a lot of attention from outside parties, and some analysts are confident the recent price surges Ethereum has endured as a result could wind up attracting the attention of Wall Street and institutional investors. Mona El Isa, the chief executive of crypto firm Avantgarde Finance, said in a recent statement:
The highly anticipated Ethereum Shanghai upgrade is potentially game-changing and could be the catalyst towards digital assets becoming mainstream in the majority of funds… This newfound liquidity will be seen as a move to de-risking digital asset allocations by institutional investors, who have previously been put off by Ethereum’s old version that locked money in. With the removal of a major barrier, we would expect to see a rapid move towards investors staking Ethereum, which could prove bullish for the price of the asset long-term.
At the time of writing, Ethereum – the world’s second largest digital currency by market cap and the number one competitor to bitcoin – has shot into the $1,900 range.
