Ethereum has long been held as the second most valuable cryptocurrency in the global market, but the CEO of Circle has recently gone as as far to say that Ethereum was the primary catalyst to last year’s bull crypto run.
Circle’s CEO, A Prominent Ethereum Proponent
Speaking with Mellisa Lee of CNBC Fast Money, Jeremy Allaire, the co-founder and CEO of Circle, a major cryptocurrency exchange and payments platform, discussed his outlook on the current state of the cryptocurrency market.
Firstly, Allaire pointed out that public blockchain infrastructure platforms, like Ethereum, are a revolutionary foundational infrastructure that developers can build on top of to replace legacy systems. Developing on this idea, Allaire stated:
“We can build applications (decentralized applications) to replace a lot of fiduciary trust applications that we have today, whether that’s fiat money itself or financial contracts that are used for things like raising capital, issuing debt, transacting, really any kind of trust-oriented, (or) record-keeping oriented application in the world can be improved with crypto assets and blockchain technology”
The CNBC host went on to ask Allaire on where he would hypothetically place a bet on which DApp-centric platform would gain the most traction in the near future. Referencing his previous statement about Ethereum, Circle’s CEO began to state that the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap currently facilitates the most developer activity, easily surpassing platforms like EOS, NEO, Cardano etc.
He later attributed the success of cryptocurrencies last year to Ethereum’s growing presence in this nascent industry, adding:
“One of the things that really catalyzed the [cryptocurrency] market last year was actually that Ethereum, in particular, kind of got to a place where you could build apps on top of it. You could issue new tokens on top of it; you could create new kinds of financial contracts, using the smart contracts technology. That obviously catalyzed the ICO movement, if you want to call it that.”
However, Allaire still sounded hopeful about the future of other blockchain-backed platforms, stating that this blockchain sub-industry “(is) a really fertile space in terms of fundamentals, technicals, and infrastructure.” He also added that he believes that 2019 will be a good year for blockchain and cryptocurrencies, with adoption and accessibility rates reaching new highs.
Critics: It’s Not All Sunshine And Rainbows For Ethereum
Despite many prominent cryptocurrency figures and industry on-lookers holding bullish stances on Ethereum, others have begun to complain about the issues the platform has been subjected to, namely scalability and the presence of scams situated on the Eth network.
As reported by NewsBTC on an earlier date, over 800 cryptocurrencies, with many being founded on the Ethereum platform, now sit on the sidelines of the cryptocurrency industry, neglected by the community. This sparked conversations in many cryptocurrency circles, with some critics asking if scams have gone too far. Although most don’t see this as an issue, the permissionless nature of public blockchains allows anyone to create a smart contract, token or DApp on ‘platform’ blockchains, whether the creator/developer has malicious intents or not.
Crypto services like Etherscan have been trying to amend this issue, labeling fraudulent contracts, addresses, and tokens on their block explorer program as scams, saving the funds of many consumers in the process.
Other critics have begun to lambast Ethereum for not handling scalability issues well enough. A cryptocurrency researcher, going by the handle @BTCOIN on Twitter, recently found that Ethereum transaction fees have surpassed Bitcoin’s for the first time ever.
https://twitter.com/BTCOlN/status/1019031366216937472
While many may see this as an inconvenience, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum and a highly respected developer in the cryptocurrency space, has stated that for some decentralized applications, giving up the efficiency and low-cost aspects of centralized systems for decentralization is worth the higher fees.
Despite the gripes of many critics, Allaire is yet another individual who has joined a long line of prominent cryptocurrency figures who believe that the cryptocurrency market is beginning to bottom out, and is ready to experience an influx of retail and institutional adoption.
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