In a New Year tweetstorm, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the second-biggest crypto in the world in terms of market cap i.e. Ethereum, talked about some of his earlier beliefs. He had made some predictions last year about blockchain technology and the like and decided to revisit them. The developer talked about a number of subjects, including the popularity of crypto in Argentina, the worries associated with,Ethereum’s scaling, the thriving stablecoin market, the performance of bitcoin cash, as well as decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). He began by remembering an article in 2019 that said bitcoin could be helpful for Argentinians and Iranians.
Buterin had concluded that this would not be because of bitcoin’s scarcity, but because of its international and uncensorable character. The developer said that he had turned out to be generally correct in this regard. He said crypto adoption was high, but so was stablecoin adoption, as numerous businesses were operating in USDT. There has been significant growth in the stablecoin sector in 2021, as the biggest stablecoin project i.e. Tether was able to achieve a market capitalization of $78 billion. Likewise, decentralized alternatives also thrived, such as the UST, which is the primary stablecoin of the Terra protocol, which reached a market cap of $10 billion.
When it comes to Ethereum latest news, Buterin accepted that he was wrong about the way he had considered Ethereum’s scaling issue back in 2015. A screenshot he posted on an Ethereum slideshow roadmap showed that it would take 6 to 12 months for implementing the proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol. However, the beacon chain Ethereum 2.0 had been launched just last year, which will change the network’s proof-of-work (PoW) consensus to proof-of-stake (PoS). He believes this is because he underestimated the complexity associated with software development.
He added that now simplicity was the focus of the Ethereum team, not just in terms of designing these solution, but also in the final product. He also talked about his famous commentary about five cents. He said that he still stands by it because the internet money shouldn’t cost higher than 5 cents per transaction. He said that this goal existed in 2017 and is still applicable today. He added that it was the primary reason they were working on scalability. When it comes to decentralized finance (DeFi), the Ethereum co-founder stated that he had been correct, but he had missed the mark with NFTs. Read more about CFDs, NFTs, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.
He stated that he had missed them altogether in Ethereum’s initial whitepaper and that was his mistake. Buterin also talked about the state of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) currently. He disclosed that he had been very optimistic about the project and had been in full support of the big block side when it came to the scaling war. However, he said that BCH had now become ‘mostly a failure’. He declared that communities that form around a rebellion have a tough time surviving in the long run, even if they are for a good cause because they give more importance to bravery as opposed to competence.
He said that they tend to be more united around resistance, rather than focusing on a way forward. Meanwhile, his cryptocurrency i.e. Ethereum is also dominating the crypto mining trends. The Ethereum network saw its mining hashpower reach an all-time high in the beginning of the New Year at 1 petahash per second (PH/s). Its hashrate had previously reached 1.0122 PH/s on December 22nd, 2021, but the latest metrics from January 2nd indicate that ETH’s hashrate Ethereum’s is still above the 1 PH/s mark. This is certainly an achievement for the Ethereum network.
Its price is also showing signs of a rally, as it started steadily above the $3,700 mark and is near the $3,750 zone. It has moved into a positive zone, but is still not close to its all-time high value. It did reach a new weekly high of $3,854, but there had been a minor decline as well.
