Cardano CEO Charles Hoskinson considers BTC is not well-suited to survive a one-on-one match with ETH. The co-founder of Ethereum and chief executive at IOHK told AI researcher Lex Fridman that the king crypto coin is an incredible first-generation product. Still, it’s becoming primitive compared to other newer cryptocurrencies.
“The problem with Bitcoin is it is so slow; it’s like the mainframe programming of the past, Hoskinson said. “The only reason it’s still around is that there was so much invested in keeping it around that we just kind of have to leave it there and [say], ‘one day [the computer language] COBOL will die.”
The CEO also said that there are basic enhancements that would make the coin a ‘competitive’ system, as he sees it. He emphasized that BTC’s development is slow and methodical, which is a hindrance in his eyes. Hoskinson also said that ETH, Cardano’s main competitor, doesn’t suffer from that same process lethargy.
“[Ethereum’s] getting to a point where it has a similar network effect to Bitcoin, but the community there is completely different in culture. They love evolving. They love upgrading – sometimes a little too much. And so that means if you look at the trajectory of things, if I had to bet [on] just those two systems, Bitcoin or Ethereum, I would say nine times out of 10 Ethereum is going to win the fight against Bitcoin, if it was the only competitor. But obviously, we’re here, and a lot of other people are here, so there are different things going on. It’s a much more complex game,” Hoskinson explained.
Bitcoin advocates, however, argue that the pace of its progress protected the coin from outside impact and supported its price increase from the low beginnings to a brand name globally. They also indicate the coin’s unique decentralization and security levels, along with its monetary policy and limited supply cap of 21 million coins.
