University researchers in Australia have reportedly expressed doubts about the position for the best store of value Bitcoin (BTC) is holding, believing Ether (ETH) will be “the world’s first deflationary currency.”

Specifically, A November 18th paper by four Australian researchers reportedly put up for debate regarding the possibility of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 upgrade turning ETH into a superior store of value.

The remaining co-authors of the research reportedly include Ester Félez-Viñas from the University of Technology Sydney, Sean Foley from Macquarie University, Jonathan Karlsen from the University of Western Australia, and Jiri Svec from the University of Sydney.

The EIP-1559 upgrade in August reportedly witnessed the burning of a sum of transaction fees, together with over 1 million ETH has been burned from the 118,583,580 circulating supply.

At times, per the report, transaction fees reportedly take up to over half of the 12,000 freshly minted ETH daily, thanks to EIP-1559.

The researchers reportedly believe that with the need for Ether on the rise because of its robust ecosystem of DeFi applications, more ETH will be burned.

“Annualizing the rate of Ethereum creation since EIP-1559, the expected increase in the total Ethereum supply is only 0.98%, being less than half the 1.99% increase in Bitcoin supply which is almost certain in the same period.”

The researchers reportedly arrived at the conclusion that Ether provides “better inflationary hedging properties than Bitcoin, and Ether may therefore offer a superior long-term value storage than Bitcoin.”

There has been a gradual increase regarding the interest in Bitcoin’s hard cap of 21 million coins and its suitability as an inflation hedge, because of its rampant money printing during the pandemic.