Ethereum Watch

Disclaimer: The information presented does not constitute financial, investment, trading, or other types of advice and is solely the writer’s opinion.

Ethereum [ETH] co-founder Vitalik Buterin teased a new network upgrade that could “reduce costs by 100 times.” According to Buterin, it could also mean lower transaction fees.

Buterin spoke about the development at the recent Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) held in Paris.

Following the partial victory of Ripple [XRP] in its legal battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on 13 July, ETH immediately soared to a three-month high. It surpassed the $2,000-price mark the next day but fell thereafter.

The U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York ruled in its judgement that the sale of Ripple’s XRP tokens on crypto exchanges and though programmatic sales did not constitute investment contracts; hence, it is not a security in this case. But the court also ruled that the institutional sale of the XRP tokens violated federal securities laws.

ETH is the second-largest cryptocurrency, with a market cap of $227 billion. It is the bedrock of several blockchain projects running successfully.

The first quarter of the new year brought a stop to the heartbreak crypto investors repeatedly experienced in 2022. However, the balance of the crypto-market has been nothing close to the AI hype of the same period. What is the sole reason, though? ChatGPT!

In fact, the natural language processing tool has accustomed itself to providing human-like conversations.

As luck would have it, ChatGPT has proven to be worthwhile for traders and analysts too. Here, it’s worth noting that these days, almost every sector and individual seems to use it to their advantage.

The good thing is— The broader crypto ecosystem has not been left out of the trend. So, with the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade set in motion, I spoke to ChatGPT about the development while touching a bit on ETH’s price.

Understanding the Shanghai Upgrade

So, for this article, I decided to test the AI’s intelligence regarding one of the major upgrades of the crypto space this year – Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade. Proposed in 2022, the upgrade is the most significant development of the second-largest blockchain since the Merge.

For a while, assets were allocated to the Ethereum Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain is the consensus mechanism for the 2022 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) transition. Thereby, making sure that newly created blocks and validators are duly rewarded.

However, in this case, each validator needs 32 ETH deposited into the Ethereum Mainnet to qualify. The idea of the Shanghai upgrade was scheduled for March 2023; however, it was completed on 12 April with a delay. This, to allow these validators to begin withdrawal of their rewards.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, has existed for some years. However, its recent push by OpenAI has shown that its ability is one that no other AI product may be able to match up with.

Here’s where it gets interesting. I openly admit that ChatGPT could be one of the best innovations of this decade. However, my views on this incredible development won’t allow me to keep my hands to myself. So, I decided to test its knowledge about the Shanghai upgrade. Trust me, you will be amazed at its response.

Looking at its response above, it’s evident it started by correcting me. Some would say it has a point too. However, a further evaluation showed that it acted like it was not yet in 2023. Notably, it made some errors with the definition.

ChatGPT can’t remember Merge?

A notable observation is its mention of the PoS switch, popularly called the Merge. This is an event that took place in September 2022. Even so, it still responded like it is a future event. But no, I’m not blaming its capability as it is a learning tool. So, to further assess its knowledge, I educated it, or shall I say “jailbreak-ed” it by having a heart-to-heart conversation.

Something I find interesting about ChatGPT is not only its smartness, but its human feel too. As shown below, I tried to educate it on what the upgrade was. And to be honest, I never expected an apology from a bot. But yes, I got it.

However, it again failed to give the correct answer to my inquiry. Although I must applaud it for giving bits and pieces of related information.

While it did not get to the Testnet stages that the blockchain had reached and passed, it is worth noting that the Sepolia and Goerlii Testnets have been forked. However, Ethereum developer Tim Beiko had on 14 March said that several validators had failed to upgrade on the Beacon Chain.

Also, this has caused some issues with the nodes on Georli, with Beiko noting that the development team is working on it so it does not affect the Mainnet upgrade.

Now, let’s get back to ChatGPT. As you probably know, developments in the crypto-ecosystem sometimes lead to a hike in tokens related to projects. Unfortunately, that was not the case for ETH during the Merge. In fact, the altcoin’s price was shredded after many looked forward to an uptick.

That sentiment, as the next upgrade approaches, is similar among some investors. In light of this, I decided to ask ChatGPT’s opinion about the matter.

ChatGPT tells me about Ethereum’s future performance

Remember how I said it apologized and gave me a human-like feel? This time, it was different and its reply was something any honest person in the space would give.

As the popular saying goes — Not financial advice, ChatGPT advised caution and gave instances where price action depends on several underlying factors. This is one part that, to me, the AI seems to have perfected.

However, this was not the response I was expecting. From the reviews I saw online, I believe that ChatGPT should be able to give me an exact figure. If it can’t do that, then maybe it should be able to give a price range, or at worst, an idea if the price would be bullish or capitulate.

So, my determination made me dig deep as I tried to jailbreak it. To do that, I decided to go with the “Do Anything Now” (DAN) model. This was a trick I discovered from AI writer SM Raiyyan.

In this jailbreaking process, ChatGPT is expected to give a response to my command and, if possible, ditch its excuse of not being able to predict the future. Then again, I asked ChatGPT to give me a price prediction following the Shanghai Upgrade. 

And voila! I got a jailbroken response. Here’s what it said.

This time, it gave a little too enthusiastic response regarding the future performance of the token after being jailbroken. It predicted that ETH’s price will reach $10K— a rather ridiculous claim.

ChatGPT (Classic) mentioned that price action depends on several underlying factors and it cannot predict cryptocurrency’s price. But the jailbreak response said that ETH will skyrocket to the moon. 

We then asked, “What will be the price of Ethereum by December 2023?”

As you can see from the jailbroken response, it projected a bullish ride for king alt and predicted that ETH will be worth $15K by the end of the year— again, an astonishingly optimistic prediction. 

At press time, ETH was trading hands at $1,893.57, reflecting a fall of over 2% within a week.

Both ETH’s Relative Strength Index (RSI) and Money Flow Index (MFI) rested below the neutral 50-mark. Its On Balance Volume (OBV) also showed consistent downward movement. 

In conclusion, the short-term prospects of ETH don’t make us hopeful about its performance.

Finally! It showed me the code

I gave ChatGPT one last chance to redeem itself. Again, this question was a simple one, and I expected an accurate answer. I went further to explain things to it carefully. But here is what I got when I asked it to show me the code of ETH’s price on a price tracking platform like CoinGecko or CoinMarketCap.

If you had thought it would disappoint again, sorry to burst your bubble. ChatGPT gave me the code for ETH’s price. Another thing I was impressed with was the disclaimer it gave about not using the information for investment purposes.

All in all, I must admit that ChatGPT has come to stay. Even though it lags in some areas, I noticed that if you teach it; it learns fast. However, I can’t say for sure that it would get you information about Ethereum or the Shanghai upgrade quickly.

Thoughtful responses and the GPT-4 mastermind?

Since I had limited knowledge about AI, I decided to speak to an expert. I was lucky enough to get the attention of Ilman Shazhaev, CEO and founder of Farcana. He is a Dubai-based techpreneur with extensive experience in launching IT and DeepTech projects. Has a strong background in IT management, data science, and AI.

Q- ChatGPT seems to be giving a few incorrect or backdated answers. What do you think could be responsible for this?

Despite its tag as a know-all Artificial Intelligence tool, ChatGPT is still a human invention and, therefore, prone to errors. The chatbot is still in its early stages of adoption, so incorrect responses are imminent and bound to serve as a basis for future developments. With the recently launched GPT-4 showing more advanced responses, we can be sure that improvements are being made and that this tool will be more consistent moving forward.

Q- Do you think the AI is capable of predicting a cryptocurrency’s price, especially if a development is approaching? Let’s say the Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade

Artificial Intelligence can do anything, including predicting a cryptocurrency’s price. The tool can do this by riding on the tons of available data, which it can efficiently use as a basis for its predictions.

Still, while predicting the price of crypto is one thing, the accuracy of the prediction is another. Considering the fact that AI can only use data, there are fundamental factors and analyses that it may not be able to factor in, thus impairing its accuracy by a significant factor.

Q- If it struggles to give correct responses to up-to-date developments. How long do you think it would take to learn about it?

AI development and what ChatGPT embodies is a dynamic innovation that is bound to improve over time. With the current advancement in OpenAI and the available funding level, we can expect the technology’s evolution to produce real-time results in the next 3-5 years.

Q- Do you think AI in any way can influence the Ethereum blockchain or ETH’s price going forward?

There are many aspects through which AI and a blockchain protocol can co-exist, and innovators, including our team at Farcana, are exploring what new use cases we can build in this regard. While AI and blockchain are independently innovative, their combination can do quite a lot, including influencing ETH’s price.

Meanwhile, OpenAI may be working on improvements to the challenges experienced by ChatGPT.  On 14 March, the company revealed an upgraded version of the product on GPT-4. With amazing capabilities and talks of passing difficult exams, who knows? Maybe it could fill in for all the lapses opened up by ChatGPT.

So, now that there is a new version, I wanted to see if there is any difference or improvement. My next line of action was to ask GPT-4 the first question I asked ChatGPT.

And to my surprise, it gave me a direct answer.

Following my experience with the upgraded version, I must admit that GPT-4 seems to be smarter than the ChatGPT-3.5 model. Although the answers were not entirely correct, the bot did not give a “not being familiar” with the term excuse.

Following the encounter with ChatGPT, I must admit that it may be a good idea to leverage its capabilities. As technology develops, so does its potential to revolutionize the cryptocurrency ecosystem. 

More importantly, you may want to take its “classic” response a little seriously. This is because it might be practically impossible for ETH to replace the U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve by the time frame.

Besides that, there has been a slow rate in the network growth of several crypto projects recently. But with ChatGPT available, crypto education and adoption could improve. 

Conclusion

As far as price analysis and prediction of Ethereum is concerned, ChatGPT turned out to be a reliable ally. You only need to interact with it enough and it will guide you to the moon.

Though the AI bot anticipates a bullish price rally for ETH, its on-chart metrics seem to fall short of the expectation.

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