Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin: Crypto Could Replace Gold And Be The 'Linux Of Finance' By 2040

Ethereum ETH/USD creator Vitalik Buterin believes that cryptocurrencies will definitely settle down in the medium-term future.

What Happened: In a recent interview with Noah Smith, Buterin said he expects crypto to only be as volatile as gold or the stock market in the next couple of decades.

“The main question is just what level the prices will settle down at. In my view, a lot of the volatility early on had to do with existential uncertainty,” he said.

When Bitcoin BTC/USD first dropped from $31 to $2 in 2011, most people did not know whether the digital asset was just a one-time fad or whether it would collapse for good, explained the Ethereum creator.

The second major crash in 2014 gave rise to less uncertainty in the market and in the subsequent one in 2017, market participants were more concerned about whether the cryptocurrency would gain enough mainstream legitimacy to support a higher price level, said Buterin.

“Over time, these existential questions are going to become more and more settled,” he said.

“If, in 2040, cryptocurrency has made its way robustly into a few niches: it replaces gold's store of value component, it becomes a sort of "Linux of finance" an always-available alternative financial layer that ends up being the backend of really important stuff but doesn't quite take over from the mainstream, then the chance that it's going to either disappear or take over the world completely in 2042 is going to be much smaller, and individual events are going to have much less of a bearing on that possibility.”

See Also: WHAT IS ETHEREUM?

Price Action: The crypto market saw a 0.37% decline to $973 billion in the last 24 hours. As per data from Benzinga Pro, BTC was trading at $19,811 and ETH was trading at $1,554 at press time, both largely unchanged in price over the last day.

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