There are two big “holy wars” that the cryptocurrency industry is fighting.
That’s according to a panel of leaders in blockchain technology who spoke Wednesday at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. — Kathryn Haun, a Stanford lecturer on the board of Coinbase; Bridget van Kralingen, who leads blockchain efforts at IBM; and Brad Garlinghouse, the CEO of Ripple — who feel that some of these wars are worth fighting and others are merely a distraction.
- Cryptocurrencies vs. government-backed currencies. “These are holy wars,” Garlinghouse said. “There are groups of people who are grounded in the ideology and passionate zealotry that [say], ‘We’re going to overthrow governments. We’re sick of being held down by the man and we’re going to circumvent all these regulations and unlock crazy new things.’”
Garlinghouse later argued that crypto fans shouldn’t be “attacking fiat” currencies. It’s a new asset class, the panelists argued, not something to replace money.
- One cryptocurrency vs. another: Haun pointed out that oftentimes there is a rift even between different crypto companies and currencies.
“One of the reasons for, by the way, the warring factions is that people are economically incented in a lot of cases, who hold a particular asset, to trash talk the other,” she said.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
