I am not a bitcoin maxi whatsoever. But it's important to note what is going on in this rivalry between BTC and ETH. This PoW vs PoS shit is basically a war for the soul of crypto. Bottom line: PoW represents society prioritizing financial sovereignty, while PoS/ETHMerge represents society prioritizing convenient business.
Say what you will about his technical prowess, Vitalik is a status quo politician. (I'd argue the same about Jack Mallers. Watch out for that one; he's not a bitcoin maxi or a libertarian type by any means.) Vitalik should be talking with Russia about how to free their system from US dollar hegemony, after all, Vitalik is half Russian, but the way Vitalik talks on Twitter is as if Klaus Schwab has a puppet's hand up his butt.
But for all the tailwinds mainstream media is gifting Vitalik and the ETHMerge, BTC hashrate hits an all time high. And actually, BTC is pumping more than ETH. Why?
The same reason that other PoW coins started showing up in Coingecko top coins when ETHMerge was announced. Because as long as there is a viable choice for people, there will always be folks who prioritize freedom over convenience and propaganda. This is the free market at work.
What we can expect in time is a choking of that free market so that there is no choice. The US government has put out feelers that it will ban PoW mining (for all except those huge institutions that can pay the tax, of course). In the same document, the government has said it will support PoW alternatives that are coming from chains like $QUANT and $HBAR.
What do I expect? The libertarians will eventually cave, at least in the US. You'll still have countries like El Salvador that do not benefit from this system that will choose bitcoin. The IMF will not be able to impose blanket regulations on crypto over the whole world, because there are countries that simply won't benefit from it. And you can bet the sheiks in the Middle East won't comply simply because they don't want to be ruled over by Western European types. So there will always be a choice; you just may have to make some physical moves to take full advantage of them.
This is good. Bitcoin may not be the sole king of price discovery in the future, but it will always have a place regardless of the sycophants surrounding the rest of crypto.
