Circle’s Jeremy Allaire believes that privacy and identity are crucial in the new phase of web3.
Jeremy Allaire, CEO of stablecoin issuer Circle, believes that the world is finally moving away from the speculative phase of cryptocurrencies and focusing on the value that the new industry has to offer.
He mentioned this while speaking at the Converge22 conference in San Francisco. He compared the current growth of the crypto market to the early days of the internet. Allaire said;
“It is an architecture that the internet was founded on many decades ago — this idea of open networks, of open standards and protocols, of connecting entities, devices and people in interoperable ways, of a globally intertwined world of decentralized systems.”
He highlighted the fact that security has become very crucial to the crypto ecosystem, thanks to the innovation provided by on-chain mechanisms.
However, Allaire added that there need to be advancements in some blockchain technologies like zero-knowledge proofs. Such advancements would make it easier to prove identities and credentials while simultaneously ensuring individuals’ privacy. He said;
“People need to be able to interact with apps, and services, and content and transactions without knowing that they’re using crypto. I don’t know I’m using SMTP [Simple Mail Transfer Protocol] when I send an email with Gmail — I do know that, but a lot of people don’t know that, and that’s okay.”
According to recent data, we have more than 300 million people in the crypto space at the moment. Allaire believes that for mass adoption of crypto to happen, there needs to be a much more simplified version of the underlying technology. He said;
“People don’t need to know what chain they’re on or even what stablecoin they’re using. They just need to know that it’s frictionless interaction with data and money.”
Finally, he pointed out that the blockchain industry is reaching the next broadband phase. He concluded that;
“We need safe, scalable and energy-efficient public blockchains” just as we did with the internet, he stated, raising the example of new developments such as Ethereum’s recent move to proof-of-stake and the emergence of layer-2 and layer-1 scaling models. He said the step was “necessary for this [blockchain] to become something that is used by everyday society for mission-critical applications.”
Circle’s USDC stablecoin has grown to become one of the leading stablecoins, with a market cap of over $48 billion.