Ethereum Under Fire After Brandt’s Brutal Critique

When Peter Brandt speaks, the markets listen. This trading veteran, active since the 1970s, dropped a bombshell on the platform X: “Ethereum is a worthless trash”. With over 700,000 followers and a reputation built on decades of technical analysis, Brandt is neither a troll nor a maximalist craving attention. His critique directly targets the second-largest crypto on the market, sparking a heated debate within the community and shaking investors’ certainties.

A brutal condemnation signed Brandt

In a message published on April 14, 2025, Peter Brandt delivered an equally brief and devastating statement: “Ethereum is a worthless trash.”

This comment, published on the social network X (formerly Twitter), immediately ignited discussions. Although Brandt does not detail his reasons in his most recent post, this declaration fits into a critical logic he has expressed in the past.

In November 2024, he already qualified Ethereum as a “completely broken utility token” because at the time he denounced its high usage fees and technical complexity.

This attack adds to a series of criticisms that Brandt regularly directs at altcoins, questioning their legitimacy. For the trader, only Bitcoin truly meets the criteria of a durable store of value. Through his successive statements, Brandt points out several weaknesses of Ethereum :

• A structural complexity that would hinder its readability and adoption ;
• High transaction fees, as gas fees continue to make on-chain operations prohibitive, especially during congestion spikes ;
• An ambiguous positioning, between smart contract platform, DeFi hub, and rival to L1 blockchains ;
• A loss of credibility due to the multiplication of unfulfilled promises in his view.

This radical stance is not new for Brandt, but its regularity and media reach contribute to maintaining doubt among some investors. His influence on the markets is not insignificant. Thus, even a brief opinion is widely shared within specialized circles and can impact short-term perceptions.

Growing tensions around Ethereum

The timing of the declaration is not accidental. It comes in a context of prolonged stagnation for ETH, whose price has not surpassed the 4,000-dollar mark in the long term since November 2021.

Brandt, without explicitly mentioning the course, seems to echo this feeling of technical and strategic stagnation perceived by some investors. On social networks, several voices have expressed their frustration at the lack of major technological breakthrough since the “Merge” update, which has thus reinforced the ambient skepticism​.

Behind these criticisms emerge questions about the direction taken by Ethereum. While the Pectra update is expected to improve network efficiency, the community remains divided on the priority between scalability and decentralization.

For some analysts, Brandt’s comments reflect a fundamental tension: the increasing difficulty for Ethereum to reconcile promises of innovation and operational reality. In the short term, this new wave of criticism could strengthen maximalist pro-bitcoin discourse, which would encourage developers to accelerate structural reforms.

However, in the longer term, Ethereum will need to demonstrate that its technological roadmap can meet the expectations of an increasingly demanding market.

If we consider that Brandt’s criticisms are not new, their resurgence in an increasingly fragile context could weigh on the perception of Ethereum in the medium term. For its supporters, the next evolutions of the network will provide the expected answers. However, for others, the current problems (disillusionment, slowness, divisions) rather evoke the beginning of a long cycle of exhaustion. What is certain is that the Ethereum community has no more room for error. It must react quickly, at the risk of losing trust, and therefore value.