A Second Theranos? Renowned Economist Demeester Predicts Ethereum’s Ultimate “End”

• Tuur Demeester says that Ethereum will go down like Theranos.
• The Ethereum skeptic thinks that Ethereum will not be able to deliver on its promises of PoS.

Renowned economic analyst and founder of Adamant Capital, Tuur Demeester, has taken a swipe at the second-largest cryptocurrency, Ethereum. Demeester, who is a strong Bitcoin proponent, has no love for Ethereum, comparing it to Theranos, an American health technology company that went bust in 2018 after it was found that its executives were lying about the capabilities of the product it was developing.

He claims that contrary to what Ethereum developers and proponents say, Ethereum is neither decentralized, scalable, or secure. This makes it comparable to Theranos which deceived investors for fourteen years that Edison, its blood-testing machine, would be able to perform blood tests instantly – a feat it was never able to achieve.

“Theranos’ deception ran for fourteen years. Ethereum running for six so far. Not decentralized. Not scalable. Turing vulnerable,” Demeester said in a tweet.

“The Endgame is coming. Expect death by a thousand hard-forks.” Demeester adds, alluding that a similar fate to Theranos awaits the Ethereum blockchain network.

This is not the first time Demeester is pointing accusing fingers at Ethereum. In tweets that date back to 2018 which Demeester points out himself, the venture capitalist held that Ethereum, despite having a market cap of $13 billion at the time, could best be described as a science experiment “despite its marketing.” He maintained that comparing Ethereum to Bitcoin is a deception of the highest level as “Ethereum’s architecture and culture is opposite to that of Bitcoin.”

Demeester has also called out the fact that Ethereum keeps postponing all the upgrades that it promises to achieve better scalability including sharding, plasma, and proof-of-stake migration. 

His renewed criticism is coming at a time when the CEO of Theranos Elizabeth Holmes has come to the limelight again. The CEO, who currently faces 11 counts of fraud and up to 20 years in prison, was recently brought up to testify about her relationship with Sunny Balwani, her former business partner who is also up for trial next year for his involvement in the fraud the company committed, the Guardian reports.

The case for Ethereum

Despite Demeester’s long-held opposition to Ethereum, the blockchain network has come a long way and seems poised to go even farther. For one, the Ethereum blockchain seems to be closer to its proof-of-stake stake migration now more than ever. Many projections are that “the merge” which will usher in ETH 2.0 is set to take place next year. 

The consistent growth of Ethereum over the years has also shown that it has built confidence in the market. Ethereum is currently the de facto DeFi enabler as well as the biggest NFT enabler. It has also posted more returns for investors compared to Bitcoin. Year to date, ETH is up 478.2%, outperforming Bitcoin’s 69.4% increase. The market cap of Ethereum currently stands at over $500 billion even as its dominance in the crypto market stands at about 21.8%.