Paypal Co-Founder Thinks Blockchain Won’t Go Away, Not Sure About Bitcoin

Paypal co-founder, Max Levchin, shared his opinion on blockchain and Bitcoin, terming the former as a fantastic technology, but not sure about the latter's long-term potential.

With its massive growth this year, Bitcoin’s market cap left several big names behind, including Disney, IBM, McDonald’s and the global online payments service, Paypal. However, Paypal co-founder Max Levchin is not too confident about Bitcoin’s long-term future.

Speaking to CNBC on the sidelines of the Breakthrough Awards, Max Levchin lauded Bitcoin’s underlying technology and termed it an interesting speculative commodity:

“It's a brilliant mathematical idea, fantastic technology, interesting commodity to speculate on. TBD on whether it's a currency or just a way to make money fast. I invest in things that I have a strong, long-term point of view on and bitcoin I'm still trying to figure out.”
While Bitcoin, rising from $1,000 to over $11,000 this year alone, has managed to steal the spotlight, it is common for people to confuse the cryptocurrency from blockchain technology, which serves as the backbone for all cryptos.

Simply put, Bitcoin is an application of blockchain technology, and in reality, is the most basic implementation of its kind, as newer cryptocurrencies offer more advanced features and greater flexibility.

The distributed nature of the blockchain, and its potential to create tamper-proof databases that are verifiable and secure, lends it very well to applications involving financial transactions. However, there are various other use cases of DLT, and governments, private entities and ICOs continue to discover them.

Confident about blockchain technology’s future, Levchin predicted its use in various industries, but did not share the same opinion about Bitcoin:

“I think a form of a blockchain technology, bitcoin or otherwise will be essential and will not go away. Not only that, it will continue advancing and being used in many different industries from financial technology to medicine. But it's not clear to me whether Bitcoin itself is the great long-term investment.”
Currently trading at over $11,700, Bitcoin is touching new heights and taking the whole crypto market with it, especially in anticipation of institutional money flowing in as CBOE and CME launch their futures contracts this month. Whether this trend will continue, or Bitcoin will see a major crash, is now a $350-billion-dollar question.

author by Hunain Naseer
Source: https://cryptovest.com/news/paypal-co-founder-thinks-blockchain-wont-go-away-not-sure-about-bitcoin/