Vitalik Buterin at his most positive, speaks of next Ethereum bull run

I can honestly enjoy listening to Vitalik Buterin give an interview, even though I am part of a very select group it seems. The founder of Ethereum is known for thinking long and hard about every reply and giving very long, technical answers to what sometimes seem like easy questions.

His interview with Lex Fridman last year is a fantastic example of this.

Crypto winter

During the ‘crypto winter’ of 2022 you could never see him express any sort of emotion, and only during the upgrades of the Ethereum blockchain does he do some kind of press tour. Last year as the ‘merge’ took place he was in the news a reasonable number of times, and then again this month because Ethereum implemented the ‘Shanghai‘ upgrade. All very technical, but all passed without a slight hiccup.

And now, for one of the first times, I’m seeing a slice of emotion there in Vitalik’s quote. Bulish emotion that is.

If we don’t fix scaling before the next bull run, people are going to be stuck paying $500 transaction fees.

Said Buterin as he discussed the Shangai upgrade.

70%

Just like Bitcoin during the first quarter of 2023, Ethereum also climbed rose by some 70%. Many Wall Street investors chose to diversify their crypto investments and Ether is usually their first choice after Bitcoin.

Demand for digital assets picked up again this year as investors expect the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to ease its rate hike campaign. The banking turmoil following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank also fueled demand for “safe haven” alternatives, and Ether is clearly one of them.

Ether is still trading some 55% below its all-time high price of $4,799, which it reached at the height of the previous crypto bull market in November 2021, back when Bitcoin traded at $69,000.

At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading for $1,950.