The Rise of the Ethereum Economy

I believe Ethereum is poised to surpass Bitcoin as the most valuable crypto by market cap. The main reason is that I look for the ETH economy to continue gaining momentum and ultimately it will dwarf the perceived utility of bitcoin. There are now dozens of projects building on the ETH platform through ERC-20 tokens, and while most are still in the very early stages we will start to see a few reach a real world audience in the next 6-12 months. As these tokens grow and become used by more people, the use of ETH grows as well because a small amount of ETH (called gas) is required every time a transaction is sent in the ETH ecosystem. 

The two tokens I'm currently holding (ZRX and OMG) will play vital roles in the near term growth of the ETH economy as they will be two of the first tokens to see widespread usage. ZRX is a protocol that allows for the decentralized exchange of any ERC-20 token. Third party relays will be built on this protocol to facilitate the matching of buy and sell orders, the first of which are launching over the next month or two. If you want to exchange some ZRX for OMG today, you would need to send your ZRX from your wallet to a centralized exchange, then convert to ETH, then convert to OMG, and finally withdraw your OMG back to your wallet. Each step involves a fee and in the interim your tokens are stored in the wallet of the centralized exchange rather than your own. Once the first ZRX relays come online, you will be able to directly exchange your ZRX for OMG and your tokens will never leave your wallet which you fully control. As ZRX continues to develop, it will eventually be possible to exchange non ERC-20 tokens - which means one day you will be able to exchange your ZRX for Monero, or ZRX for Litecoin, all without the coins ever leaving your wallet or needing to exchange for ETH/BTC in the process. 

OMG fills an equally vital role in the process of exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat. Through the OMG platform, it will eventually be possible to convert any crypto into local fiat. If you want to exchange ZRX for fiat today, you need to send ZRX to an exchange, convert to BTC or ETH, send that to another exchange, convert to fiat, then finally withdraw it to your bank account. Eventually OMG will simplify that down to the single step of sending ZRX to your OMG wallet, and it will then be converted to local fiat whenever you pay for something with the OMG platform. 

These are just two tokens out of dozens that make up the ETH economy. As work continues and real world usage becomes a reality, it is hard to imagine Ethereum not becoming the dominant cryptocurrency. ZRX will remove the need to use bitcoin as an intermediary when converting one crypto to another, and OMG will remove the need to use bitcoin when converting to fiat to use for every day payments (most crypto credit/debit cards only accept bitcoin). Not to mention bitcoin has a contentious debate approaching over the use of SegWit2x later this year while Ethereum is united in support of Metropolis, the next major software update which launches over the next few months. The future of the ETH economy is a bright one in my opinion, though it is still a long way from seeing mainstream use beyond an ICO funding mechanism. ZRX and OMG are two projects that will help lead the way as we see more and more ERC-20 tokens reach their development goals over the next few years. I look forward to seeing Ethereum surpass bitcoin as the most valuable crytpocurrency by market cap - and that will only be the beginning.