Ethereum researcher Vivek Raman said that the Mirage upgrade is an opportunity for Ethereum (ETH) to beat Bitcoin (BTC), stating that he is convinced that Ethereum’s upcoming move to Proof of Stake will enable it to beat Bitcoin as the top cryptocurrency.

Only from an economic perspective and due to the impact of the supply shock, Ethereum has a chance to beat Bitcoin, Raman said in an exclusive interview with Coin Telegraph.

Merge, a long-awaited upgrade that will complete Ethereum's transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake, is scheduled for September. In addition, the Merge upgrade will transform Ethereum’s monetary policy, making the network more environmentally sustainable and reducing the total supply of Ethereum tokens by 90%.

Raman noted that after the Mirg upgrade, Ethereum will have a lower inflation rate than Bitcoin. Especially with fee burns, Ethereum will be deflationary while Bitcoin will always be inflationary. This is despite the decrease in the rate of inflation with each halving.

While Bitcoin will retain its function as digital gold, according to Raman, Ethereum will still have more adoption space as a base layer for the decentralized finance (DeFi) economy.

And the Merge upgrade will not reduce the high Ethereum transaction fees, which is still the main problem preventing Ethereum from scaling. But this is not a problem, according to Raman, as Ethereum will rely on Layer 2 expansion solutions to support the activity of most users.

“Users need to know that all their activities must be on Layer 2 and eventually Ethereum will be used as a base Layer 1 for settlement, security and decentralization,” Raman said.