I had a pretty interesting discussion this week on the Invezz podcast with the founder of the cryptocurrency Waves, Sasha Ivanov.
It was almost philosophical at points. Sasha lamented that crypto is not the same place it was a few years ago; that it has largely become a money grab.
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In looking around at all the scams, pump-and-dumps and fraud in the space, he certainly has a point. He also mentions manipulation and how the industry is so obsessed with price watching and money that it has lost touch with the technology roots and mission that it had to begin with.
Sasha outlines that he “never got into crypto for the money”, but rather for the technology and to make a real difference.
Indeed, Waves – and Sasha – have been around a while. Formerly ranked in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap, Sasha is not very fussed these days about prices. Waves, for the record, has fallen down the ranks, yet remains entrenched in the top 100 coins.
Sasha’s most impactful thoughts were around scalability. He says that “crypto will never progress” unless it solves this scalability problem. The honesty is refreshing. In fairness, he is right. It’s hard to argue that scalability is simply an issue that nobody has come close to solving yet. And there is no way anything can solved in a big-picture sense until that issue is boxed off.
I asked him whether Ethereum’s much-publicised Merge – and especially the sharding feature which is planned for the future – can help solve the scalability problem. He is bearish on the idea that sharding will help Ethereum, largely dismissing it as a dead end. Any technical heads might find his reasons interesting.
In a time where most founders and investors repeat the same jargon about bear markets being a time to build, that all is good, and that there is nothing to worry about, it was a breath of fresh air to hear Sasha address crypto’s issues so candidly.
I asked him if he was motivated to continue. He said yes, and the answer was emphatic.
It made me reflect myself on how crypto has changed over the last few years. Certainly, it is unrecognisable from where it was – today it is legal tender in two countries, public companies hold it on their balance sheets and it occupies space in the biggest newspapers in the world.
Yet there are ugly parts too. There is stealing, greed and vitriol. And overlooking all that is not doing anyone any favours. It was nice to hear the founder of a big coin address those concerns head-on.
As always, feel free to reach out with comments.
Continue the conversation on Twitter with @InvezzPortal, @DanniiAshmore and @wavesprotocol Or visit https://waves.tech/ for more information.
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