Do you know what Ethereum is?
If you’re reading this you probably know what Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, is (tldr Bitcoin 2.0 — blockchain + smart contracts), but it is amazing how many people seemingly do not. On Friday I was at the Stanford Tresidder Starbucks talking with a friend about cryptofinance. I assumed most of the people (students at the best and most prominent university that powers the heart of Silicon Valley’s tech entrepreneurship and innovation machine!) around us would know what Ethereum was but my friend was confident they would not. To answer this question we randomly asked ~15 people if they knew what Ethereum was — he was absolutely right! Not a single person knew what Ethereum was: in fact, some people looked at us like we were crazy and speaking another language.
How can people (at Stanford!) not know what Ethereum is when it is an extremely exciting time not just for Ethereum but the entire cryptofinance space? On Frida, Bitcoin was at an all time high (ATH) of almost $2,000, cryptocurrency market cap was at an ATH of ~$68B (now ~$87B!), and Ethereum itself was at an ATH of ~$12B (now ~$18B!)? Major companies such as Microsoft, Intel, JP Morgan, Accenture, Credit Suisse, and Samsung are involved in Ethereum development through the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. In the broader cryptofinance space additional major financial institutions such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Santander, and UBS are working with Ripple, and others are partnering with Stellar.
Why the current disconnect between cryptofinance growth and public awareness? The primary reason is that there isn’t a breakout public facing cryptofinance application yet — and there may never be. This is different than the early growth phase of the internet that saw public facing services such as AOL that individuals paid for . A few businesses may accept bitcoin but they are few and far between.
Cryptofinance growth will be different than the internet because it will primarily take place silently at the international banking infrastructure level, whereas internet growth was public facing and fueled by direct public use. The public directly used the internet and “touched” it by browsing websites. Cryptofinance growth on the other hand is fueled by revolutionizing international banking infrastructure and reducing transaction costs while accelerating payments. In some sense, cryptofinance is to finance as software defined networking (SDN) is to the internet, and I bet the public is equally uninformed about SDN even though it is expected to be a $432.2B market by 2025.
The above is supported by the fact that much of the development in the cryptofinance space is targeted at backend infrastructure that the public may never directly “touch” — for example:
The headline on Ripple’s (the third largest cryptocurrency by market cap) website is “Join the Global Settlement Network” and its “solutions” are targeted at banks, not the public.
What does this mean? Send me cryptos! The public is completely unaware of the significant cryptofinance growth and innovations that are at a minimum modernizing and streamlining the $150 trillion cross-border banking and payment system.
Bitcoin 1DCAa1RbzJndfFBDy7X39Pap8fFZK93Aav
Ether 0xCd1B04a788C292026c343A0C90b969E81E563264
NEM NB5YYWAVPKEOB3SQEFDVFV247UJHXYZ3K3EUC7LL
Ripple rBZSTzXQYT8eGcgaZwpCZCuYfqVVv7QNGV
Stellar Lumens GDYKS3PBYWX32FR25KDNT2DMG7JWRLA4U5WXDTRK4D7RHVMUSYORUCHM
Litecoin LNPZDmLKA1vpe8gat2Qf76cDFEacoqc57S
