Whales are losing interest in ETH. Especially with its limited transaction capacity. L2s don't bring the same level of liquidity and selection of dApps/tokens as the main chain. Solana is where the money is. Eventually, Ethereum will become a "ghost town" as people move on to the next big thing in crypto. Money talks, right? If this keep up, ETH will never catch up to BTC. Even with high demand, I don't it will make a difference when BTC is the one cryptocurrency that started it all. It has first mover advantage.
I guess it's too late for ETH to "replace" or "flip" BTC. Why not focus on making it a better alternative? I know Vitalik and team made ETH a "centralized shitcoin". But I believe there's still room for improvement. Hopefully, ETH goes back to its roots by being a truly-decentralized smart contracts platform for everyone. I can dream, can't I?
I would say that centralized is a bs, because they offered a solution as POS and people accepted it, they didn't force anyone and let the public decide and the public decided it, nobody can print more ETH anytime they want, nobody can reverse it, nobody can freeze it, there is no control over it, all Vitalik or anyone else in the world can do is offer something , basically a suggestion and if we accept it then we do, and if not then it goes away, POS wasn't the first suggestions and wasn't the last, just the biggest one we accepted.
On the other hand we are talking about something that's taking a bit of time, and because of that I honestly believe that we are going to end up with a greater result eventually, we just need to find what it would be, it has to be the fact that ETH has alternatives now, whereas bitcoin is sole founder and top ranked, meaning that ETH gets its market share eaten up whereas BTC is not touched, which is why ETH can't go beyond BTC ever.
There will never be anything else neither, it is not going to be ETH but it will not be anything else neither, we are just going to end up with a much better and different result eventually and that's the most important part.