Ethereum has quickly become the second-largest blockchain network in the world, after Bitcoin, of course.
But there are reasons to believe that Ethereum could eventually usurp Bitcoin as the most sought-after crypto currency in the world.
While Bitcoin remains the preference for storing value in the online economy, Ethereum has become the leading financial infrastructure, with more than $12 billion of daily transactions, according to a Grayscale report.
As cryptocurrencies become more commonplace in everyday life, Ethereum’s ease of use and trading may make it a more powerful and influential currency in the near future.
Reddit, for example, has made a big push for Ethereum. Users of the popular discussion site receive rewards for adding “quality content” to the site, including Ethereum-based tokens that unlock other features of the community website. They can also be swapped for other cryptocurrencies, or even converted into cash. The Reddit “moons,” as they’re called, are already valued higher than Dogecoin, another newish and popular form of cryptocurrency.
Thus far, the move seems to be paying off.
In a big fundraising push in early 2021, the company announced a $250 million investment round in February, then nearly doubled that with a $410-million Series F funding round led by Fidelity Investments, according to Decrypt.co.
Company leaders told The New York Times that they expect to bring in more money, bringing the investing total to $700 million. The most recent investments have pushed the company’s value to $10 billion. That means it gained $4 billion in value since its $6 billion valuation in February.
“Fidelity made us an offer that we couldn’t refuse,” CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said.
Reddit isn’t the only company that’s betting on Ethereum-based tokens. A new film production company called Mogul Productions, which launched in February, has created an app aimed at bringing together movie fans, aspiring filmmakers, and industry veterans to offer a new way of making movies.
App users can purchase Mogul’s STARS Tokens, based on Ethereum, and spend those tokens to vote on movie scripts, buy exclusive NFT merch, and even get an Executive Producer credit on Mogul films.
The company is in post-production on its first “crypto-funded movie,” and is asking its users to vote on which movie it produces next.
Calling itself a decentralized film financing (DeFiFi) platform, Mogul also just announced a new cryptocurrency bridge to the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). The bridge increases the accessibility to Mogul’s own STARS Tokens, boosts its usability, and exposes it to hundreds of thousands of new users on the Binance Smart Chain. This also means Mogul is now one of the first cryptocurrency projects to launch on three blockchains at the same time (Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain), according to the press release.
Even Reddit and Mogul Productions are just two small examples of a much larger story.
Whether it’s Bitcoin, Ethereum or another cryptocurrency, the broader trend is that digital money isn’t going anywhere. Depending on who you ask, it just might become the global currency of the future.
According to a recent Forbes article, a poll of banking executives concluded that most of them now believe Bitcoin and other digital assets could replace fiat currencies like the U.S. dollar within the next five to 10 years—a shift they described as “seismic.”
”We uncovered several findings that illustrate a seismic shift in financial services resulting from the evolution of blockchain-based digital assets,” consultants led by Linda Pawczuk at the accountancy company Deloitte wrote alongside a report that found 76 percent of finance professionals believe bitcoin and crypto could serve as an alternative to or replacement for fiat currencies in the next five to 10 years.
