One of the strongest and wealthiest men in crypto, chairman and co-founder of Ripple Labs Inc., Chris Larsen, has praised Ethereum for having interesting use cases while maintaining that it is disappointing Bitcoin requires lots of energy.
Larsen made these comments during a virtual conversation with Wall Street Journal reporter Paul Vigna on the tech cold war between China and the U.S.
The blockchain evangelist observed that the U.S is far behind China in terms of blockchain adoption, advising that the U.S and businesses across the country embrace blockchain and get more involved to be acquainted with the system.
At the beginning of the interview, Paul Vania, The Wall Street Journal covering digital currencies especially Bitcoin since 2013, said it’s about a year that Facebook unveiled its digital currency Libra, and has given the crypto space more courage, changed quite a lot of people’s perceptions about what crypto is and has certainly made policymakers and governments to have a new and better perspective about cryptocurrency.
On the statement, Chris said Paul was right that Facebook joining the crypto industry was a major milestone and a new ball game.
Larsen said China responded to the incitment with the decision to launch a central bank digital currency, and this he said, was a major and global achievement for the crypto industry.
The chairman of Ripple said although the propaganda shared by the early adopters of Bitcoin and crypto entirely might not be right, however, Larsen said it will take many different attempts and time for digital assets, like many technologies, to get mainstream adoption.
He also observed that people are starting to see the real-world implications of digital currencies and how they are changing the experience of billions of people. Larsen was sure this revolution is just beginning, but the case of Facebook and China’s central bank digital currency is a milestone that will propel the industry into a kind of a whole new opportunity and new direction.
Ripple’s Chris Larsen on Bitcoin
Asked if Bitcoin has lived up to its potentials or fallen short a bit, Larsen said the global financial system of today like Swift and corresponding banks are antiquated and are going to be completely eroded off the industry as soon as possible.
Larsen said Bitcoin could have had problems if it worked with the system since it expends lots of energy, a stand Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse also used to condemn the cryptocurrency. He as well pointed out that miners can theoretically undo things on the network, thereby increasing the problems of the system.
The Ripple co-founder said Bitcoin is a kind of digital gold and called “a great use case”, however, he said those that brought the Bitcoin idea could have worked with the system to change it like Ripple is doing at the moment.
Ethereum Protocol is Interesting
Although he said Bitcoin consumes lots of energy and controlled by Chinese miners, Larsen praised the Ethereum protocol, saying the network has big innovations like Decentralized Finance (DeFi), which is just evolving.
Larsen concluded that government supports for Bitcoin and Ethereum are indirect help for China as the larger percent of miners on the two protocols are situated in the country.
On web monetization like XRP-centric Coil, Larsen said the idea is beginning to take off. People have to exchange bits of information for bits of value and that is the promise of decentralization, Larsen explained, adding that the innovation is already growing stronger.
