Ethereum hasn’t done too well over the past year. Since peaking at $1,400 and nearly “flipping” Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency has embarked on a steep downtrend, shedding a large majority of its value as demand has tapered off.

In fact, one ETH is now valued at under 0.02 BTC — a level not seen since the pre-ICO bubble levels, which is crazy to think about.

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To make matters worth for Ethereum bulls, the community has been slammed by its critics — namely Bitcoiners — and competitors to the platform have been propped up, like EOS, Cosmos, or Tron.

But, one cryptocurrency venture capitalist is arguing that should history repeat itself, now may be the optimal time to invest in ETH, no matter what sentiment is like.

Crypto Twitter Tensions Flare

Over this past weekend, tensions have flared between members of the Ethereum Twitter community and the broader Crypto Twitter.

The spats seem to stem from a presentation from Michael Goldstein, who had a bit of fun bashing “nocoiners” and “s**tcoiners” at a Bitcoin-centric conference on the weekend. In that presentation Goldstein, the President of the Satoshi Institute and a prominent industry commentator, explained how one could “meme Bitcoin to the moon”.

Goldstein issued his keynote somewhat in jest, but according to Youtuber “Crypto Bobby”, the founder of Proof of Talent, it has “ruffled some feathers” across the industry, including those in the Ethereum space.

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This perpetuates hate that Ethereum has been receiving for months now, as it remains down around 80% from its all-time high — both in U.S. Dollar terms and in BTC terms.

Indeed, many on Twitter, have pointed towards the crypto asset’s great underperformance as a sign of the death of the project, which used to be the crypto industry’s flavor of the month.

Ethereum Could Recover

According to Chris Burniske, however, the pain may soon be over for Ethereum holders and believers. In a two-part Twitter thread posted on Tuesday, the Placeholder Venture partner, who famously coined the term “crypto assets”, gave his thoughts on the future of ETH.

Summing up the project’s current status in one sentence, Burniske wrote that “Ethereum is enduring its first mainstream bear market, just as Bitcoin did in 2014/15.

1/ $ETH is enduring its 1st mainstream bear market, just as $BTC did in 2014/15.

In retrospect, 2014/15 was the best risk/reward period for investors to get BTC exposure.

— Chris Burniske (@cburniske) August 20, 2019

While the investor didn’t tip his hand when it comes to where he believes Ethereum will bottom — if at all — he argued that Bitcoin’s first mainstream bear market, when it tumbled from $1,300 back to the low-hundreds, was “the best risk/reward period for investors” to gain ETH exposure. Drawing similarities between then and now, he opined:

“To objective observers, the network’s momentum was clear despite the bearish price action; those pre-disposed to dislike based on perceived vested interests, were blinded by biases & missed the bus.”

Indeed. Over the past few months, Ethereum has seen strong fundamental developments. For instance, stablecoins based on the blockchain now transact more volume than Venmo, one of the leading fintech firms. Also, decentralized finance applications have started to swell on the platform, with millions of dollars worth of decentralized loans being issued every week.

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Burniske argues that “what happened to Bitcoin is happening to Ethereum now”, implying that should history repeat itself, now’s a great time to scale into the second-largest cryptocurrency, despite the “FUD”.

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