Bitcoin, Ethereum Have No Asset Backing, Says World Wide Web Creator: 'That's Really Dangerous'

Inventor of the World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee has spoken sharply against the emerging crypto industry, dubbing it a form of “gambling.”

What Happened: Berners-Lee made a comparison between the cryptocurrency and dot-com bubbles during his recent appearance on CNBC’s “Beyond the Valley” with Inrupt CEO John Bruce.

He likened the crypto industry to the dot-com bubble where speculation drove market caps to astronomically high levels. As an example, Berners-Lee pointed to a company in Texas that created a website to facilitate the sale of cattle online but had a market cap that was greater than the estimated value of all the cattle in the world. 

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Why It Matters: Berners-Lee cautioned against investing in companies that are valued based on what the market speculates about the future, pointing out that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin BTC/USD, Ethereum ETH/USD, and others are not backed by assets and their worth is driven purely by speculation. “A digital currency that is not linked to anything… where it's only speculative… obviously, that’s really dangerous.”

“Investing in certain things, which is purely speculative, isn’t what, where I want to spend my time,” added Berners-Lee.

While he acknowledged that crypto had some utility, he warned people against converting it to fiat immediately upon receiving it via remittances. He explained that although remittances are the "most useful" use of cryptocurrency, keeping it and investing it can be looked at as "gambling". 

Price Action: At the time of writing, BTC was trading at $24,940, up 1.94% in the last 24 hours, according to Benzinga Pro.

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