Earlier this month, Nic Carter (Castle Island Ventures Partner), expressed his point of view on the utility of Bitcoin, showing why it is a revolutionary alternative to the traditional banking system. However, he pointed out that many Bitcoin competitors haven’t been able to see the point of the new tech.
Carter explained in a recent Unchained podcast that other than Bitcoin and Ethereum, the altcoins don’t have a real usage.
What Other Altcoins Are Promising?
Carter explains that the altcoins are facing the same situation the first crypto coins faced when they were created in 2011.
“[…] The emphasis has always been on technical innovation — some of which were really marginal technical innovations — and really insufficient attention to the things that I believe matter, which is like: How do you ensure that the developers can’t abuse their privilege within the system? Are there checks and balances? Is the monetary policy credible, for instance? And oftentimes, what we actually see in these systems is those credibility-endowing facts are traded off to achieve glamour metrics or technical thresholds.”
Can Ethereum Be Money?
The only exception from Carter’s opinion on the altcoins is, as we said, Ethereum, which has seen in the past week a huge price move against BTC. However, back in March 2016, it was down 85% against BTC.
Carter argued that “Ethereum has a really vibrant community and kind of organic groundswell of usage and development. Beyond that, I would say it’s very sparse.”
Ultimately, Carter believes that only the cryptocurrencies which aim to be money are worth creating. Meanwhile, Ethereum is considered as a “digital gas for computing costs” and not money. This is why Carter advises Ethereum to become money. With that in mind, at the Ethereal Tel Aviv 2019 event, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin stated that ETH could be money if the community wants it to be. The same thoughts were echoed by Joseph Lubin, the Ethereum co-founder and founder of the blockchain technology company ConsenSys.
While BTC is seen as a valuable and trustworthy crypto coin on the market, it still faces several issues such as the alarming level of mining centralization in the industry. This year have been great for BTC, but not as great as it was for Chainlink (LINK), which, at one point, it was over 800% against the USD.
Leave a Reply