How Tether’s Surge on Ethereum Is Affecting Bitcoin

Jacob Franek, cofounder and COO of Coin Metrics, discusses why daily transaction fees on Ethereum have surpassed those on Bitcoin, what daily transaction fees reflect generally about a blockchain, why this change appears to be driven by demand for Tether on Ethereum, and what types of transactions people are using Tether for on Ethereum. We also cover Bitcoin vs. its forks — Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Satoshi’s Vision — and whether or not the latter two are becoming medium-of-exchange coins as they hoped to be, why they’re being used more for data storage and what kind of data is being stored there.

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Episode notes:

Coin Metrics: https://coinmetrics.io

Jacob Franek: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-franek-b9865039/

ETH daily transaction fees surpassed those of Bitcoin: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F92cbb3e2-4e28-4cd7-8557-db7eea1656c5_1200x742.png

For a few months in 2018, ETH daily transaction fees were higher than BTC’s: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd2e5e596-39da-4c3a-a6ec-6c4277e1d210_1420x878.png

Demand for Tether on Ethereum skyrocketing: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F632ba7b5-de3e-4a9d-b34c-d30a32486070_1200×742.png

Ethereum processes more than 2x transactions per day than Bitcoin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QD82uclQKUQXp1WT12LMuqTVobkvNKEq/view

ETH locked in DeFi rising: https://twitter.com/spencernoon/status/1174048582204309505

Gas per transactions rising on Ethereum, indicating transactions are becoming more complex: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q53YFSgwSgtvvd346ARdbFV2ejwX8ZLX/view

Non-ETH/ERC-20/ERC-721/Tether transactions are also growing: https://twitter.com/glassnode/status/1173647820580147203

Ethereum miners have been voting up the gas limit: https://www.etherchain.org/tools/gasLimitVoting

Increasing the gas limit effectively increases the block size: https://etherscan.io/chart/gaslimit

Coin Metrics’ comparison of Bitcoin forks: https://coinmetrics.io/a-comparative-analysis-of-bitcoin-forks/#more-1865

Comparison of medium of exchange metrics for BTC, BCH and BSV: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7af691e0-7ee9-4dab-aad3-9e0a8a651542_1048x876.png

BSV being used for data storage: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff9d22b7a-c133-4086-a553-f7fbecb02227_1200×742.png

Almost all BSV transactions come from weathersv app: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F85817c8b-69a2-42ff-9174-ab4bb81c29e6_1200x742.png

Comparison of hash rate on BTC, BCH and BSV: https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4e16275d-80aa-48ca-bb84-0ddf7929be49_1387x833.png