Tether’s CTO criticizes Ethereum’s financial system
According to Paolo Ardoino, the network’s transition to a new consensus algorithm will not be able to eliminate congestion and reduce fees
15.09.2022 - 10:30
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What’s new? Bitfinex and Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino said that Ethereum cannot compete with bitcoin as a form of money. While speaking to Crowdfund Insider, he explained that Ethereum is “stuck between claims of being a form of money and claims of being a platform.” According to Ardoino, The Merge will not eliminate the network’s congestion and therefore will not make it more financially useful.
What else did Ardoino add? He noted that bitcoin is the only asset that has “a solid narrative, one that hasn’t changed.” Ethereum, in turn, is constantly undergoing changes, so it will never reach the levels of the first cryptocurrency, Ardoino believes.
He added that as a form of money, ETH is inferior to BTC because its supply is not limited. According to Ardoino, while the Ethereum upgrade has attracted a lot of community attention, it has not made the network more decentralized, besides it still needs Layer 2 (L2) solutions to scale. He believes that the network will experience congestion as before, which will lead to higher transaction fees.
That said, Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, previously announced its support for the Ethereum upgrade. The company’s representatives called the network’s transition to the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm “one of the most significant moments in blockchain history.” And cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex launched trading of Ethereum forks tokens on PoS and PoW even before the network’s upgrade.
In February, crypto analyst Max Keiser said that Ethereum and other altcoins are “just outright scams.” In his opinion, no digital asset is as decentralized as bitcoin. Keiser argues that altcoins have no useful applications, and DeFi is “gray” schemes.
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