Coinbase co-founder: There is a possibility that Ethereum will surpass Bitcoin

While the price of Ethereum has rebounded in response to the successful hard fork, Ethereum has also seen a split as some miners continue to use the abandoned blockchain and develop their own currency, Ethereum Classic. Amid all the drama, one of the announcements came from the US exchange Coinbase, which announced that they will support buying, selling, sending and storing Ethereum.

Coinbase Co-Founder Appreciates Ethereum’s Potential

Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam published a blog post on Medium.com full of praise for Ethereum. Fred expressed his opinion that Ethereum has more potential than Bitcoin, which has only seen the development of infrastructure applications. He believes that Bitcoin's scripting language has too many limitations.

Fred wrote: “Ethereum has taken the four-function calculator of Bitcoin’s programming language and turned it into a full-fledged computer. The Ethereum network is only nine months old, but the level of application development is already faster than Bitcoin’s.”

Why is Coinbase important?

Coinbase is a company based in San Francisco, California, USA, which had 2.8 million users as of November 2015. All of these users can now buy, sell or store Ethereum through their iOS or Android wallets, not to mention directly at coinbase.com. Coinbase's business has now expanded to 32 countries around the world.

They also operate GDAX, a digital asset exchange also based in San Francisco, which has supported Ethereum trading since May 2016. In addition to these measures, Coinbase also announced the addition of the Coinbase Buy Widget to their website and app, a tool for their partners to embed the Coinbase buying service. In addition to supporting Bitcoin, the Buy Widget will also support purchases using Ethereum.

Will Ethereum replace Bitcoin?

Coinbase’s move can be seen as an endorsement of Ethereum. Coinbase engineering manager Varun Srinivasan recently wrote in a blog post:

“Like all great innovations, Ethereum is not without inherent risks — its protocol is nowhere near as mature as Bitcoin, consensus around its recent hard fork is not universal, and its scripting language is a double-edged sword. However, what it has brought to the crypto community is a pace of innovation that I have not seen since the rise of Bitcoin. That’s why the folks at Coinbase have focused their efforts over the past few months on bringing Ethereum to our users.”

However, not everything seems rosy as roses. Ethereum’s scripting language could also be its downfall. Fred Ehrsam mentioned this in his blog and admitted that it brings a threat of greater regulatory scrutiny. He also mentioned some technical challenges, such as the problem of ‘network scaling’ when adding mini-programs in addition to basic transaction processing.

David Duccini of the Strength in Numbers Foundation said of Coinbase’s support for Ethereum:

“ETH is second only to Bitcoin in terms of market cap, however, ether is not a store of value. I think their support for ether was premature, and announcing it in the face of The DAO collapse was largely a self-humiliating follow-up. I think in many ways it is safer to add support for litecoin for pure transaction purposes. The fact is we don’t know what other problems ETH will face, and we shouldn’t risk our reputation on ether.”

Coinbase is committed to Ethereum and they really think this altcoin has future potential. According to Fred Ehrsam, Ethereum may surpass Bitcoin.

“It is very possible that Ethereum will completely surpass Bitcoin. Ethereum can do everything Bitcoin can do. Although Ethereum has less practical experience, it is developing faster, has better leadership, and has more developer adoption. Ethereum is now challenging Bitcoin’s first-mover advantage, but at the current rate, this is conceivable.”

Some comments from readers:

smd: Let it surpass that! If there is another hard fork, I will probably have a heart attack and die.

vortex: Ridiculous. It won’t be long before the Coinbase team starts pumping Ethereum again, Ethereum bailed itself out, created an alterable blockchain, and then split in two.

Technically speaking, this hard fork did not solve any problems, and all previous Solidity problems still exist.

polar: Oh come on, this guy is as smart as Mike Hearn but offers no technical arguments.

Christopher Halbersma: He is right about Ethereum, if Bitcoin continues to have an artificially limited supply, people will leave Bitcoin and go somewhere else. Maybe Ethereum, maybe not, but eventually they will leave Bitcoin.

Old school: Maybe artificial limits are a good thing, to stop Bitcoin from growing too fast. Satoshi did this on purpose.

Vortex: Bitcoin is the only coin that is not a scam. It is true that many people will go to other hyped blockchains, but when those chains collapse, Bitcoin will still exist. Layer 2 expansion solutions are ready to go online in the next 12 to 18 months, and by then the entire expansion dispute will be a thing of the past.