An interview with Ethan Wilding, Co-Founder of Ledger Labs and founding team member of Ethereum
Ethan Wilding is the Co-Founder of Ledger Labs and founding team member of Ethereum. He is the former Chair of the Certified Bitcoin Professional exam, one of the first not-for- profit programs to establish a standard body of knowledge in the field of blockchain technologies. Ethan earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Waterloo and taught at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
As one of our first advisors, Ethan helped shape the vision and mission of our STK token and utility; a universal solution that will remove barriers and enable worldwide acceptance of cryptocurrency. We sat down to chat with Ethan about the current state of cryptocurrency, and what’s next.
STK: Hi Ethan. As you know, part of our mission is to create a universal solution for people to save, spend or share their money in any currency and in any country. Why do you think cryptocurrency is the right answer for borderless finance?
Ethan: Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies (like Ether and Bitcoin) are by their very nature trans-national and decentralized, and thus are potentially well-suited to any project or endeavour that seeks to provide cross-border finance solutions.
STK: It’s clear there are a lot of advantages to using cryptocurrency over traditional forms of cash or credit. Why do you think more people aren’t exploring the opportunity, and what will it take to bridge this gap to mainstream adoption?
Ethan: I think there are several reasons why cryptocurrency isn’t yet widely adopted, but let’s raise two of them: (1) Most people don’t have any cryptocurrency, and acquiring it is still a significant barrier to entry; exchanges are proliferating and getting better, but at the moment the process of signing up, getting approved (by passing the KYC requirements), and wiring money to the exchange still takes several days. And (2) most merchants don’t accept cryptocurrency, so there is little incentive for people to acquire and use Ether or bitcoin as a currency instead of government-backed legacy fiat. Moreover, the rapid price increase and significant volatility of most cryptocurrencies is more suited to using crypto as a speculative vehicle instead of an alternative payment method. That is changing though, especially with the rise companies that allow you to spend crypto easily on traditional services and goods. An excellent example is Billz, a Canadian company that enables users to bypass banks and pay their bills (utilities, credit cards, etc) using cryptocurrencies. The possibilities can only expand from here, and STACK will provide this type of convenience for any payment of any goods or services at almost any merchant. Solving the problem of ‘merchant adoption’ by not making the merchants change anything on their end, and instead use already established global payment rails, is a great step toward wider adoption.
STK: Decentralization is often cited as an advantage of cryptocurrency. What is it about the idea of decentralized money that appeals to people?
Ethan: This is a big topic, but in brief I think many people are keen to use currency where no central authority can control its issuance, devalue or re-value it at will, censor payments, or impose capital controls. What we see with decentralized currency that wasn’t possible before is ‘currency’ (bitcoin, ether, and others) where people are given full transparency into the rules of the monetary system, are free to transact and conduct commerce on a global scale, do not have to rely on a central authority (like a bank) to store their digital money and hopefully make it available when needed, and do not have to fear that their transfer of value will censored or delayed by a third-party actor. These are systems where people can now genuinely take control and responsibility of their digital assets, and not have to trust third-parties to safeguard and provide access to your finances.
STK: The STK token was designed to address the lack of merchant acceptance of cryptocurrency at point of sale. Is it crucial to the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency to be able to use it for day-to-day financial transactions?
Ethan: If by ‘mainstream’ we mean ‘consumer adoption’, then, yes. Widespread merchant acceptance is crucial for consumer adoption if cryptocurrency is going to be used widely as an alternative to fiat currencies.
STK: What aspect of STK are you most excited about?
Ethan: Well, one of STK’s main goals is to make it easy for anyone to spend their cryptocurrency at merchant terminals everywhere. This is a very important step toward making crypto widely adopted, and I’m excited to see this become a reality.
STK: Ethan, thanks as always.
