The cryptocurrency market has grown tremendously over the past few years and experts believe the market is still in its early stages.
Brain Brooks, the CEO of BitFury and former U.S. Acting Comptroller of the Currency, stated that cryptocurrencies are not here to replace the US Dollar. He told CNBC’s Ylan Muii at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Monday.
When asked about his thoughts on cryptocurrencies in general, Brooks said;
“Most of crypto is about replacing the centralized banking system with networks that allow user control versus bank control … the crypto assets that have prices are more like internet stocks. It’s more like you bet on Google if you think there’s going to be high internet traffic; if you short it, it’s that people are going to go back to the post office, right? But it’s not that ethereum or Ripple or anything else is trying to replace the U.S. dollar, it’s trying to replace the system of transmitting value.”
While some people think that cryptocurrencies are here to replace fiat currencies, some experts believe that is not the case.
Cryptocurrencies are designed to improve the traditional financial systems, ensuring that people from all parts of the world get to enjoy financial services. Furthermore, with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, financial transactions are cheaper, faster, and more secure.
Currently, there are more than 20,000 cryptocurrencies, according to data obtained from Coinmarketcap. Some experts believe that this is too much. Bertrand Perez, CEO of the Web3 Foundation told CNBC that;
“We are at the stage where basically there are far too many blockchains out there, too many tokens. And that’s confusing users. And that’s also bringing some risks for the users. Like at the beginning of the internet, you were having lots of dot-com companies and lots of them were scams and were not bringing any value and all that got cleared. And now we have very useful and legit companies.”
The cryptocurrency market has been in a bearish trend since the start of the year. The total cryptocurrency market cap reached an all-time high of $3 trillion in November 2021.
However, it is down by more than 65% since then, with the total market cap now hovering around $900 billion.