Jan van Eck said on CoinDesk's "Markets Daily" that the transaction fees on the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are unpredictable, making it harder to build applications in those ecosystems. "The most important story of 2023, which people know, but I don't think they focus on enough, which is simply that transaction costs are now available at affordable rates through Solana or the so-called layer 2s," van Eck told CoinDesk TV's Jen Sanasie in an interview.

"Because you see the transaction fees for Bitcoin and Ethereum, no one would ever use that database to build anything on, right? My analogy for non-crypto people is, would you want to fill your car at $50, you know, week after week, and then one week at $600? And that's effectively what high gas fees are on Ethereum," he said.