Intricacies of the broader cryptocurrency ecosystem have been about the battle for dominance between the different tokens.

A recent poll revealed that investors would instead go long on ETH than XRP.  Bitcoin commands 59% in the total market share, and ETH has 10.9, and XRP has 6.82%.  Therefore, investors looking for Altcoins prioritize ETH.

“If we were to enter an Altcoin season, which coin would you long/buy first?”

XRP is competing with ETH and Stellar Lumens.  XRP, EOS, and others challenge the position of ETH.  The market is beginning to, and the Altcoins are decoupling Bitcoin, and therefore, it is expected for the capital to flow inwards to ETH.  This the price might be pumped to $400 or even $450 in a few weeks ahead.

ETH continues to be superior to XRP.  This probably is linked to the development of Serenity.  ETH is working towards upgrading the current source code from POW to consensus algorithm.  This is indeed limiting as this makes the network prone to centralization. POS deals with scalability.

Scalability and staking are attractive features to cryptocurrency enthusiasts. The SEC has stated that ETH is not regarded as a security.  However, they have not stated anything about XRP, therefore, making the status of XRP in the gray area. While a useful liquidity tool, investors need to feel that it is necessary as the third most liquid asset in the cryptocurrency market.  Therefore, massive gains are due for ETH when compared to XRP.

Mariano Conti, Head of Smart Contracts, questioned high school students about decentralized financial applications “How do you protect your money?” and “What if banks decided you do not own your money?”  Further added, “This whole movement is called decentralized finance,” said Conti. “We’re going to see a lot of projects being created around that. It’ll hopefully be what my kids are going to use.”

The bounties of the Surge track at ETH New York was related to educating the high-school students regarding the basics of blockchain.  The program offered topics like “What is a smart contract?” and “How to set up a [crypto] wallet.” This was done in an attempt to explain the evolution of money and to introduce stable coins.

The bounties related to this event were not technical; instead they were creative like “short rap verse about using DAI,” or making an original fun hashtag concerning the application.