There is a great disparity between the speculative price of ETH at present and the reality of Ethereum, argues the investment firm with cryptocurrencies Tetras Capital in a study released on Wednesday via Twitter, and mentions among the catalysts of this discrepancy the insufficient capacity of the Ethereum network before the imminent launch of important Dapps, the increasing regulatory pressure against the Initial Currency Offers (ICO) that can reduce the demand of ETH, and the existence of several competitive platforms for Dapps and for capital raising, which can decrease the value proposition of Ethereum .

These adverse factors to Ethereum , combined, will lead to an imminent lowering of the ETH price, since it is overvalued, says Tetras . "We believe that this list of catalysts to be made will push the ETH price down."

The arguments of Tetras Capital in favor of the thesis begin with a brief recount of the birth of Ethereum in 2014. From what happened in those days, the study highlights the collection by the Ethereum Foundation of about 31,500 BTC, which equaled around $ 18 million at that time ($ 234.5 million currently), "establishing the largest crowdfunding initiative on the Internet ." He adds that "participating in the ETH crowdsale turned out to be one of the greatest events generating wealth in history."

This success, Tetras Capital points out, ETH's price performance and the ease for anyone to create their own token, originated the huge wave of ICO.

The attached chart, produced by Tetras Capital, summarizes the great boom of the 2014 ICOs to date. "The ICO-mania started by Ethereum is growing to this day, although there are some signs of a slowdown, and now we believe that the scenario is ready for a substantial deflation of the bubble, " the document says.

For researchers, the only way for Ethereum to grow and consolidate and justify its current valuation is to become a Value Reserve (RV).

This condition can be met, says the study, if it is successful and dominant in some of its primary applications, which are: platform of decentralized applications and platform for raising capital.

Regarding the support of the Dapps, after an analysis of the consequences on the architecture of the network by incorporating a growing number of decentralized applications, the study points out that a dilemma is created for Ethereum, or larger blocks, that can weaken the decentralization or face uncontrolled growth of commissions.

The current higher scrutiny of ICOs is an additional factor that may decrease Ethereum's revenues as host of new tokens , but Tetras also points out that while ETH is not considered a value by the SEC, "the same can not be said. of most of the ICO that Ethereum hosts ".

Tetras Capital says not to be sure of the exact scope of a regulatory action on the ICOs that are in Ethereum, but that such an action could "declare the decentralized model of money collection completely out of the law".

The mentioned risk factors are discussed in the tweet thread in which the study is announced and among the criticisms are mentioned the lack of support, with facts, that effectively the network will not have the sufficient resources to support an increasing number of Dapps . Or if indeed the emergence of new platforms of decentralized applications can weaken the leadership of this network.

Already in mid-April Brendan Bernstein, co-founder of Tetras Capital, had published a study on the relationship between the decrease in the price of ETH and the decline in the popularity of the ICO, which also argued the regulatory pressure around This form of financing by governmental institutions of the United States and Korea, two of the main cryptocurrency markets worldwide.