Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joseph Lubin has recently argued that “trader types” are driving the cryptocurrency ecosystem’s price swings as they “feel like their fortunes are rising and falling” in the market.
During an interview with Bloomberg, Lubin noted these swings won’t stop the ecosystem from growing, as since most cryptocurrencies saw their prices surge to new all-time highs late last year, developer activity rose by “two orders of magnitude.”
Since the, crypto prices have fallen dramatically, a consequence of what Lubin dubbed another bubble in the market. He said:
We’ve seen six big bubbles, each more epic than the previous one, and each bubble is astonishing when they’re happening but when you look back they look like pimples on a chart.
Each of these bubbles, he noted, sees a tremendous surge of activity, like the one “we’re seeing right now.” In the future, per his words, we’re going to “absolutely” be in another bubble, presumably as investors get excited about the technology’s potential.
During the interview Lubin seemingly isn’t concerned about Ethereum’s price, as regarding it he said: “we can look at the price make growth plans and projections and we’re still on track, basically.” Meanwhile, he revealed developers keep building “more fundamental infrastructure” with each correction, so much so he believes there’s a “strong correlation” between price and infrastructure.
ETH is currently the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, as each token is trading at $280, after its price surged over 6.6% in the last 24-hour period. This week, Ethereum reached an over 52-week low of little over $250, according to CryptoCompare data.
Lubin has in the past discarded Ethereum’s price performance, revealing he and his team “let the price take care of itself,” while they focus on developing the cryptocurrency. At the time he implied short-term swings don’t affect developers, who focus on fundamentals.
While Lubin admitted Ethereum’s network isn’t yet capable of competing with a legacy payment system, he added new developments in Ethereum’s layer-two solutions will help it have a large enough transaction throughput to compete.
EOS Is a “Slightly Decentralized Approach”
When asked about EOS, Lubin noted we’re moving to a world where “we’re going to have liquid deep markets for many different kinds of crypto assets,” and that in that world we’ll need a “very decentralized trust layer.”
He implied that in EOS there are several central actors who regularly confer with one another. As such, its governance system is “incredibly dangerous to treat as a layer-one solution” as it somewhat sacrifices decentralization for a bigger transaction throughput. As CryptoGlobe covered, EOS has 21 block producers (BPs) – equivalent to miners– that have been ordered to freeze accounts.
The drama surrounding EOS, which also saw a heated debate with a Block Producer emerge, saw its architect, Dan Larimer, propose a new constitution to strip the EOS Core Arbitration Forum (ECAF) off its powers.
Per Lubin, adding EOS as a smart contract to the Ethereum network could be a safe move, as it would still have the security of Ethereum’s blockchain. The developer’s firm, ConsenSys, reportedly has over 1,100 employees, and focuses on helping startups build on top of the Ethereum network.
