I wish Ethereum had better critics. Let me lay out a stronger case against Ethereum. Disclaimer: I'm holding more ETH than BTC, but that also means I'm incentivized to see the risks associated w Ethereum more sharply.
The ultimate question is "If the US gov wanted to break or change the rules controlling this coin, how much trouble would they have?" Convos re decentralization and hash rate and dev cabals, these are all necessary but not sufficient in answering this Q. But the first part of the answer is clear: it is impossible for any gov to break the rules (eg to suddenly seize ETH or BTC) on either Bitcoin or Ethereum. One thought criminal can safely send money to another using either chain and store their funds on it w/out fear. There are good criticisms of Ethereum, but a gov being able to break the rules of Ethereum isn't one of them. It might be easier to break the rules on other chains, idk, idc, I feel comfortable labeling everything but Bitcoin and Ethereum (and Monero) a shitcoin.
Changing the rules (hard-forking) is a separate, more nuanced issue. Note that, at a high level, the hard-fork process on Ethereum and Bitcoin are roughly the same & that the ETH/ETC hard-fork is a red herring that doesn't matter wrt the ultimate question above. Bitcoin also hard-forked to change its rules and reverse a hack when it was very young, and that's no big deal either. But, Ethereum is more complicated and introduces risks that aren't present in Bitcoin. Two big ones:
1. USDC and USDT are centralized stablecoins. In both cases, some company has USD in some bank and uses these to back crypto tokens on Ethereum. I've warily used USDC but there are some problems, USDC admins CAN trivially seize funds from one single thought criminal, but they're incentivized not to so it's useful enough to get heavy usage. Whatever. You can build anything on Ethereum, even centralized bank coins, and nobody can stop you. That's the whole point. BUT, in the case of an Ethereum hard-fork, USDC & USDT can only be used on one of the chains, so these admins (read: the gov) can put a heavy thumb on the scale by forcing these stablecoins to be redeemable only on the fork of their choice.
2. Lido: proof of stake has pros and cons. ETH is currently deflationary, the supply is softer in the sense that there isn't a hard cap like there is in Bitcoin, but it's harder in the sense that supply is currently decreasing and is on track to continue decreasing indefinitely. Also, you don't need 2000 ETH to stake at home, you need 32. That's still a lot, it prices out some small guys, but I know people who stake at home on a few hundred dollars of hardware. BUT, the little guy can also send small amounts of ETH to Lido to use their staking as a service. Lido is rapidly approaching a critical 33% threshold, this wouldn't allow them to unilaterally change the rules (yet..) but they could cause a lot of chaos if they chose to. This is an existential risk to Ethereum without any clear solution. It's still unclear how much power the US gov could have over Lido & how much power Lido has over it's farm of stakers, but definitely a major problem.
Note that Bitcoin isn't w/out it's own existential risks. Halvenings are good for the price of BTC and are a fun narrative driver. But, long term, it's eroding the security budget. If enough BTC is paid via tx fees, that could offset the decrease due to halvenings. But, if fees get too high, commoners can't use BTC (this problem is why I, a commoner, originally sold all my BTC). If lightning takes off and gives everyone unlimited free txs, we're back to an underfunded security budget. If the budget drops too low, some gov (or its sock puppet) could buy/rent big hash power and bend the Bitcoin rules to their liking or censor individual users or whatever. Very bad.
Side note on the BTC/BCH hard-fork: I think Bitcoiners got psyop'd. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper every year, buying an extra SSD to store more txns on a home node is no big deal. But, by rejecting an increase to blocksize in BTC, the aforementioned security budget issue becomes more severe (bc less tx fees available) and BTC becomes less useful for commoners who just want to buy stuff w BTC w/out spending $100 for every transaction. Big deal. Lightning should help, but the UX is bad and there are centralization risks. Lightning's been around for many years and high tx fees still make BTC painful to transact w today. I'm hopeful that Urbit will fix lightning, but tbd.
And, all crypto is vulnerable to a regulatory squeeze that cuts off the USD ecosystem from your favoriate chain. Long term, we'd like to separate our pure, auditable, transparent blockchains from the corrupt, opaque tradfi financial system anyway. But a premature cut would be extremely painful. Not 100% fatal, you can't kill Bitcoin or Ethereum, but it would force us to speed things along for better or worse.
Tip of the hat to Bitcoin for having a stronger RW community though. As Joe mentioned, it's true that the Ethereum community is rife w scammers & commies. Sad. But, when it comes down to it, my money is still on crypto-wallstreet (Ethereum) being a better weapon than crypto-gold (Bitcoin) in our aim of replacing and toppling fiat-wallstreet.
I wish Ethereum had better critics. Let me lay out a stronger case against Ethereum. Disclaimer: I'm holding more ETH than BTC, but that also means I'm incentivized to see the risks associated w Ethereum more sharply.
The ultimate question is "If the US gov wanted to break or change the rules controlling this coin, how much trouble would they have?" Convos re decentralization and hash rate and dev cabals, these are all necessary but not sufficient in answering this Q. But the first part of the answer is clear: it is impossible for any gov to break the rules (eg to suddenly seize ETH or BTC) on either Bitcoin or Ethereum. One thought criminal can safely send money to another using either chain and store their funds on it w/out fear. There are good criticisms of Ethereum, but a gov being able to break the rules of Ethereum isn't one of them. It might be easier to break the rules on other chains, idk, idc, I feel comfortable labeling everything but Bitcoin and Ethereum (and Monero) a shitcoin.
Changing the rules (hard-forking) is a separate, more nuanced issue. Note that, at a high level, the hard-fork process on Ethereum and Bitcoin are roughly the same & that the ETH/ETC hard-fork is a red herring that doesn't matter wrt the ultimate question above. Bitcoin also hard-forked to change its rules and reverse a hack when it was very young, and that's no big deal either. But, Ethereum is more complicated and introduces risks that aren't present in Bitcoin. Two big ones:
1. USDC and USDT are centralized stablecoins. In both cases, some company has USD in some bank and uses these to back crypto tokens on Ethereum. I've warily used USDC but there are some problems, USDC admins CAN trivially seize funds from one single thought criminal, but they're incentivized not to so it's useful enough to get heavy usage. Whatever. You can build anything on Ethereum, even centralized bank coins, and nobody can stop you. That's the whole point. BUT, in the case of an Ethereum hard-fork, USDC & USDT can only be used on one of the chains, so these admins (read: the gov) can put a heavy thumb on the scale by forcing these stablecoins to be redeemable only on the fork of their choice.
2. Lido: proof of stake has pros and cons. ETH is currently deflationary, the supply is softer in the sense that there isn't a hard cap like there is in Bitcoin, but it's harder in the sense that supply is currently decreasing and is on track to continue decreasing indefinitely. Also, you don't need 2000 ETH to stake at home, you need 32. That's still a lot, it prices out some small guys, but I know people who stake at home on a few hundred dollars of hardware. BUT, the little guy can also send small amounts of ETH to Lido to use their staking as a service. Lido is rapidly approaching a critical 33% threshold, this wouldn't allow them to unilaterally change the rules (yet..) but they could cause a lot of chaos if they chose to. This is an existential risk to Ethereum without any clear solution. It's still unclear how much power the US gov could have over Lido & how much power Lido has over it's farm of stakers, but definitely a major problem.
Note that Bitcoin isn't w/out it's own existential risks. Halvenings are good for the price of BTC and are a fun narrative driver. But, long term, it's eroding the security budget. If enough BTC is paid via tx fees, that could offset the decrease due to halvenings. But, if fees get too high, commoners can't use BTC (this problem is why I, a commoner, originally sold all my BTC). If lightning takes off and gives everyone unlimited free txs, we're back to an underfunded security budget. If the budget drops too low, some gov (or its sock puppet) could buy/rent big hash power and bend the Bitcoin rules to their liking or censor individual users or whatever. Very bad.
Side note on the BTC/BCH hard-fork: I think Bitcoiners got psyop'd. Storage is cheap and getting cheaper every year, buying an extra SSD to store more txns on a home node is no big deal. But, by rejecting an increase to blocksize in BTC, the aforementioned security budget issue becomes more severe (bc less tx fees available) and BTC becomes less useful for commoners who just want to buy stuff w BTC w/out spending $100 for every transaction. Big deal. Lightning should help, but the UX is bad and there are centralization risks. Lightning's been around for many years and high tx fees still make BTC painful to transact w today. I'm hopeful that Urbit will fix lightning, but tbd.
And, all crypto is vulnerable to a regulatory squeeze that cuts off the USD ecosystem from your favoriate chain. Long term, we'd like to separate our pure, auditable, transparent blockchains from the corrupt, opaque tradfi financial system anyway. But a premature cut would be extremely painful. Not 100% fatal, you can't kill Bitcoin or Ethereum, but it would force us to speed things along for better or worse.
Tip of the hat to Bitcoin for having a stronger RW community though. As Joe mentioned, it's true that the Ethereum community is rife w scammers & commies. Sad. But, when it comes down to it, my money is still on crypto-wallstreet (Ethereum) being a better weapon than crypto-gold (Bitcoin) in our aim of replacing and toppling fiat-wallstreet.