Coinbase Co-Founder: Possibility That Ether Blows Past Bitcoin is Very Real

 While Ether has had a bounce in its  value buoyed by the successful hard fork, it has also suffered a split  with some miners sticking to the discarded Blockchain and starting their  own currency called Ethereum Classic. In all of these dramatic  happenings, one more piece of news that arrived was the US-based  Coinbase exchange’s announcement that they would support the buying,  selling, sending and storing of Ether. 

Coinbase Co-founder praises Ethereum potential

Medium.com carried a blog  by Fred Ehrsam, the co-founder of Coinbase which was full of praise for  Ethereum. Fred expressed his opinion that while Bitcoin has only seen  infrastructure app development happen, Ethereum has far more potential.  He thinks that the scripting language in Bitcoin is too restrictive. Fred writes: 

“Ethereum has taken what was a four function calculator of a  programming language in Bitcoin and turned it into a fully fledged  computer. We now stand only 9 months out from the beginning of the  Ethereum network and the level of app development is already faster than  Bitcoin’s.” 

Why Coinbase matters

Coinbase is a San Francisco, CA based company with 2.8  million users as of November 2015. All these users will now be able to  buy, sell or store Ether in their iOS or Android wallets, not to mention  directly on coinbase.com. Coinbase’s reach currently extends to 32  countries. They also operate GDAX, a digital asset exchange company  also based in San Francisco and have added Ethereum trading on this  exchange since May 2016. In addition to these measures Coinbase has also  announced the Coinbase Buy Widget which is a tool for their partners to  embed Coinbase’s buying service within their sites and applications.  This Buy Widget will also support purchases made with Ether in addition  to Bitcoin. 

Will Ether displace Bitcoin?

Coinbase’s move can be seen as a strong endorsement of Ether. Coinbase’s Engineering Manager Varun Srinivasan wrote on a blog recently: 

“Ethereum, like all great innovations, is not without  inherent risk — the protocol is nowhere near as mature as Bitcoin,  consensus around the recent hard fork isn’t universal and the power of  its scripting language is a double-edged sword. But what it has brought  to the crypto community is a pace of relentless innovation that I  haven’t seen since the rise of Bitcoin. This is why we at Coinbase have  spent the better part of the last few months bringing Ethereum to our  users.” 

Yet not all is as rosy as it would appear. The very  scripting language that gives Ether its edge can also be the cause of  its downfall. Fred Ehrsam mentions this in his piece and also  acknowledges that it brings an increased threat of tighter regulatory  scrutiny. He also adds technical challenges such as problems in ‘scaling  the network’ when mini programs are added, in addition to basic  transaction processing. We talked with David Duccini of Strength in Numbers Foundation about Coinbase’s support of Ether and he says: 

“By the numbers ETH is the #2 token by marketcap, however  it’s not a store of value. I think their support for Ethereum was  premature, announced before The DAO debacle they were largely  self-shamed into following through. I think in a lot of ways adding  support for Litecoin would have been a safer play for pure transactional  purposes. The reality is that we don’t know what other problems ETH is  going to face and serious interests will not risk their reputation on  it.” 

Coinbase has made its bed and it will sleep in it

As far as Coinbase goes they are committed to the idea of  Ether and they do genuinely believe that the alt currency has future  potential. According to Fred Ehrsam, Ether may blow past Bitcoin. 

“What is very real, though, is the possibility that  Ethereum blows past Bitcoin entirely. There is nothing that Bitcoin can  do which Ethereum can’t. While Ethereum is less battle tested, it is  moving faster, has better leadership, and has more developer mindshare.  First mover advantage is challenging to overcome, but at current pace,  it’s conceivable.” 

Source:https://cointelegraph.com/news/coinbase-ceo-possibility-that-ether-blows-past-bitcoin-is-very-real