Hunter Horsley says ETH is designed to upgrade Web2, not to compete with BTC

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley has stated that Ethereum’s mission is to upgrade the outdated systems of Web2 and traditional finance, rather than competing with Bitcoin.

In his most recent X post, he stressed that Ethereum will position itself as the central infrastructure upon which decentralized application and fintech ecosystem developers can empower people.

Ethereum isn't competing with Bitcoin.

It's competing with web 2.0 and legacy financial services software —

We're going to move away from the "CoinMarketCap" era over the next 6-12 mo; away from the view that every crypto asset is the same, just diff mkt caps.

We're going to…

— Hunter Horsley (@HHorsley) July 13, 2025

Horsley insisted that the industry should drop the mindset of CoinMarketCap, in which every token only has a price in the market. However, he compared the blockchain sector to the mobile app industry, in which various platforms have separate uses on top of a common technology base. According to him, Ethereum is a base protocol, more of an operating system, which enables a wide range of operations in the form of smart contracts.

This position also strengthens the idea of Ethereum as a customizable blockchain that was created to change and update other technologies rather than to compete with the monetary thesis of Bitcoin. Ethereum has grown in its applications that include decentralized finance, data storage, digital identity, and tokenized assets.

Ethereum’s architecture promotes open innovation

Horsley argues that the design of Ethereum encourages permissionless participation, meaning that anyone can construct, maintain, or otherwise deal with the network. It allows its flexible structure to quickly evolve without causing a disruptive hard fork, unlike legacy Web2, which is still closed and uncompromising.

Developers currently prefer the use of Ethereum as a way of breaking down siloed systems and creating transparent and decentralized services. The open-source character of the network leads to a higher rate of innovation, scale, and worldwide accessibility. The decentralized architecture also makes it inclusive and does not experience centralized tech stack bottlenecks.

The upgrade path of Ethereum, which follows its modular development model, will allow it to integrate new technologies without undermining security or decentralization. This evolutionary ability is starkly opposed to traditional systems, where often total replacement is needed to introduce change.

Not every response to Horsley’s commentary was favorable. Crypto user Row₿ear responded that Ethereum had generally stagnated crypto and prevented Bitcoin innovation. He acknowledged Bitcoin’s ongoing strength but criticized Ethereum’s long-standing presence.

MegaETH ushers in a new era of scalability

MegaETH is one of the most significant developments in Ethereum, a scaling project aimed at enhancing the transaction process without compromising on decentralization. The upgrade also brings a modular execution system where consensus, execution, and data availability are decoupled. This structure increases throughput by large margins without sacrificing node accessibility.

During the initial public testing, MegaETH could process 1.7 Ggas/s, or 130 million transactions per day. Data throughput was up to 980 MB/s. In contrast to traditional approaches to scaling Web2, MegaETH improvements do not require costly hardware to maintain and make full nodes accessible to even more users.

The upgrade is modular but still keeps Ethereum decentralized as it scales. One of the community members said that Ethereum was never positioned as a replica of Web2, and it was supposed to go beyond the boundaries of Web2. 

With these developments, the price of Ethereum has picked up. According to the recent update, ETH has reached a price of around $3,044.75, correlating to a rise of 3.18% in a single day. The rebound comes after episodes of high volatility in the wider market, and experts consider the structural improvements of Ethereum as a possible driver moving forward.

KEY Difference Wire: the secret tool crypto projects use to get guaranteed media coverage