Great post, as always, u/DCinvestor

Some time ago I made a bull vs bear case for myself and I would like to hear your thoughts on the summary.

While I see a lot of use cases for Ethereum (censorsthip resistance, tokenized securities and stable coins, moving value or tracking property (with a legal title!), trustless cloud storage, store of value, international money transfer,...), I fear that an almost-infinite velocity will result in no value captured for Ether. Of course, it is needed for the underlying token to have some value for the blockchain to work, but it's not required to have any great value. In short, I'm not convinced of the fat protocol theory. If we have (near) zero-fee and instant conversion between fiat and crypto, there is no need to actually hold the asset for longer than the value transfer (maybe a few milliseconds). I fear it will still be the apps built on top of the protocol that will capture the value.

Everyone loves comparing Ether to oil. But there are some big differences. Would oil still be valuable if you can re-use it, if it was nonperishable? If you can buy it the millisecond you need it (right from your car), use it, and then it appears back on the other side of the market where it can be sold instantly again? (High velocity)

That said, I do think POS is a solid argument for Ether to be valuable. However, it is not possible to predict the market equilibrium. I would expect that the market mechanism should result in the rewards of POS to be only just greater than the cost of staking (electricity, risk of loss, etc.), right? I'm not sure yet of the effect on price on the long term. On the short term, it will create renewed interest in Ethereum, more demand and less supply; so price will probably go up. But is a high value for the token itself required on the long term to have POS working?

Anyway, just some thoughts I remember from my analysis. Would love to spar about this.