This is volume 1 of our compilation of famous quotes about blockchain technology and Bitcoin.
Vitalik Buterin (Co-Founder of Ethereum)
“Whereas most technologies tend to automate workers on the periphery doing menial tasks, blockchains automate away the center. Instead of putting the taxi driver out of a job, blockchain puts Uber out of a job and lets the taxi drivers work with the customer directly.”
Bob Greifeld (Former Nasdaq CEO)
“I am a big believer in the ability of blockchain technology to effect fundamental change in the infrastructure of the financial services industry. Clearing houses are a wonderful invention, but if you have a public ledger that is trusted, you can evolve back to a bilateral (trading) world but proceed with instantaneous settlement. We currently settle at T+3. Why not settle in 5-10 minutes?”
Al Gore (Former U.S. Vice President)
“I think the fact that within the Bitcoin universe an algorithm replaces the functions of [the government] … is actually pretty cool. I am a big fan of Bitcoin.”
Sir Richard Branson (Founder of the Virgin Group)
“I have invested in Bitcoin because I believe in its potential, the capacity it has to transform global payments is very exciting. t has been obvious to us all for quite some time that people aren’t satisfied with the business as usual approach adopted by the major payment networks. There’s a real desire for greater levels of control, freedom and scrutiny over what happens with our money, Bitcoin addresses these concerns and that is why so many people believe it represents the future.”
Dr. Eric Schmidt (Former Google CEO)
“Bitcoin is a remarkable cryptographic achievement and the ability to create something which is not duplicable in the digital world has enormous value… incredibly useful for many computer applications.”
Peter Thiel (Entrepreneur and Venture Capitalist)
“I'm skeptical of most of them [cryptocurrencies]… I do think people are a little bit … underestimating bitcoin especially because … it's like a reserve form of money… it's like gold, and it's just a store of value. You don't need to use it to make payments… If bitcoin ends up being the cyber equivalent of gold it has a great potential left… Bitcoin is mineable like gold, it's hard to mine, it's actually harder to mine than gold. And so in that sense it's more constrained.”
Bill Gates (Co-Founder of Microsoft)
“I think it [Bitcoin] is a technological tour de force.”
Marc Andreessen (Co-Founder of VC Firm Andreessen Horowitz)
“Bitcoin is a four-sided network effect. There are four constituencies that participate in expanding the value of Bitcoin as a consequence of their own self-interested participation. Those constituencies are (1) consumers who pay with Bitcoin, (2) merchants who accept Bitcoin, (3) “miners” who run the computers that process and validate all the transactions and enable the distributed trust network to exist, and (4) developers and entrepreneurs who are building new products and services with and on top of Bitcoin.”
James Gorman (Morgan Stanley CEO)
Bitcoin is “certainly something more than just a fad. The concept of anonymous currency is a very interesting concept — interesting for the privacy protections it gives people, interesting because what it says to the central banking system about controlling that.”
Edmund Moy (Former Director of the U.S. Mint)
“Just as cryptography is planting the seeds of a revolution in payment systems, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are planting the seeds of a revolution in currency.”
“As a medium of exchange, bitcoin offers several unique innovations to currency: global nature, infinite divisibility and easy to carry.”
“Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are decentralized and therefore a global medium of exchange. As a truly global currency, it could be used without any need for foreign exchange anywhere in the world. The resulting transactions would be nearly frictionless compared with today’s archaic systems and they would complete immediately.”
“Bitcoin is also created to be divisible to eight decimal places, with the capability for more in the future. Payments can now be made as small as millionths of a penny. Now the monetization of content becomes much easier. Prices previously too small are now economically viable, allowing many endangered businesses to thrive.”
“Another advantage is that bitcoin is easy to carry. The impact is most felt with amounts of currency larger than your credit card limits. Imagine carrying a million dollars in hard currency. That’s the equivalent of carrying 22 lbs of $100 bills or 770 ounces of gold. But carrying $1 million in bitcoin would be as light as your smart phone.”
“As a store of value, bitcoin offers a unique innovation to currency: it is solely market-based.
Currency’s face value was once redeemable for the same amount in a precious metal. Once governments left the gold standard, the U.S. dollar was made the world’s reserve currency, which was backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. While the U.S. dollar’s value vis-a-vis other currencies is driven by market demand, it is also heavily influenced by central banks’ monetary policy.
On the other hand, the market exclusively drives bitcoin’s value. Once bitcoin is more widely adopted, its value will stabilize as it migrates from a speculative investment to a widely accepted medium of exchange.”
“Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are decentralized. This means that it is a currency that is not issued by any central authority like a sovereign government. As a result, it is the most profound challenge to governments’ monopoly on creating money.
When all bitcoins have been mined, the total number will be limited to 21 million, which is a natural way to prevent inflation. When sovereign governments’ currencies were no longer redeemable for gold and they could print all they wanted with little accountability, central banks flooded the world with stimulus. With that stimulus comes significant risk, as no country has ever unwound multi-trillion dollar monetary experiments before.
Further, because of its decentralized nature, it has a low risk of collapse unlike a sovereign government’s currency (just ask the Greeks or more broadly, the European Union).
Finally, you can mine your own bitcoins. No mint needed! Even the creation of currency is taken out of a government’s hands, which leaves a government to focus on fiscal policy.”
“Bitcoin, and the ideas behind it, will be a disrupter to the traditional notions of currency. In the end, currency will be better for it.”
Featured Image Credit: Photo via Pexels.com
