Joseph Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum, appeared on Bloomberg Markets with hosts Julia Chatterley and Scarlet Fu to discuss Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the initial coin offering market. The Ethereum camp
Joseph Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum, appeared on Bloomberg Markets with hosts Julia Chatterley and Scarlet Fu to discuss Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the initial coin offering market.
The Ethereum camp views Bitcoin as one application of blockchain technology, a valuable one for storing wealth and conducting transactions. But Lubin sees far more potential in Ethereum's approach. "Our world is very exciting. We are not enormous proponents of the bitcoin cryptocurrency. We are happy to see it succeed and breakthrough. The bitcoin application is really just the first application on blockchain. We had Ethereum built a decentralized application platform on a general purpose global world computer blockchain. We are excited about many applications beyond bitcoin," he said.
Two projects demonstrate what that vision looks like. EtherDelta and CryptoKitties have grown into significant platforms despite the Ethereum network's current limitations. Both enable users to trade digital assets peer-to-peer without intermediaries, proving that large-scale decentralized commerce can work on the Ethereum protocol.
Lubin expects Ethereum to become the foundation for multiple independent tokenized ecosystems, each built on the platform. Token projects vary in quality. Some prove worthless; others hold real potential. "Some token launches are excellent and represent high quality projects. We've issued tokenized securities to fund an independent film, we've issued tokens that we believe are utility tokens that would not be characterized by the SEC as securities, and those represent consumer access tokens, they represent tokens that can be used as an Amazon Web Services credit," Lubin explained.
The two cryptocurrencies can thrive side by side, in his view. Bitcoin will remain the preferred vehicle for storing value and conducting transactions. Ethereum serves a different purpose: a substrate for building applications. "Ether can be a more programmable [form of] money. We conceive it as a crypto fuel because it powers these programs on the world computer. We're going to see lots of new projects pioneering lots of new techniques. The Ethereum project has been incredibly agile in the incorporation of new technologies. We already have tremendous network effect behind us," Lubin said.
Developer activity matters here. Ethereum boasts the most active developer community in crypto, with 30 times more developers than Fabric, which ranks second. This advantage carries weight. JP Vergne, a professor at Ivey Business School, studied what predicts a cryptocurrency's price. "We found that the best predictor of a cryptocurrency's exchange rate is the amount of developer activity around it," Vergne wrote. Projects like CryptoKitties and EtherDelta, coupled with that developer momentum, suggest Ethereum has the ingredients for sustained growth.
