Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin made the prediction that blockchain will be a primary catalyst for the growth of the global economy over the next 10 to 20 years.
Speaking in a keynote at the SXSW conference in Austin on Mar. 14., Lubin claimed that he expected the global economy to grow ten times larger over the next decade or two, and fully expected blockchain to be involved in the majority of enterprise and market growth.
Lubin explained his prediction by comparing the current of blockchain and cryptocurrency to that of the internet and email in the years before it became a mainstream sensation. Speaking on the issue of mainstream adoption and the room left for blockchain to grow, Lubin said
“There weren’t a lot of ‘normal’ people firing email around in 1983.”
Ethereum’s co-founder also took the opportunity to address the advantages he sees in the development of Ethereum 2.0 over cryptocurrency market leader Bitcoin. In particular, Lubin explained that the Ethereum development team is specifically targeting the inefficiencies of Bitcoin as areas of advantage for Ethereum 2.0, presenting what he believes will be a cryptocurrency capable of overcoming the current industry hurdles,
“In Bitcoin and currently in Ethereum, you need to have specialized hardware, burn lots of electricity, waste lots of computation, to basically keep everybody in sync. [With Ethereum 2.0, in 18 months] we’ll have a blockchain system much more powerful and scalable that uses orders of magnitude less energy.”
While Ethereum is still a year and a half away from launching its anticipated major update, one that will witness a monumental switch from a Proof of Work system to Proof of Stake, the developer is already looking to how Ethereum can revolutionize the industry and improve upon its current framework.
Lubin made headlines earlier in the week for similar comments related to the benefits of blockchain, when he claimed that the decentralized technology could be of substantial benefit to content creators. Lubin singled out artists as a subgroup that would “benefit quite dramatically” from the adoption of blockchain, allowing them greater control over the distribution of their content while dictating the parameters of its consumption.
During that talk, Lubin went on to state that blockchain removed the need for middlemen in content creation and distribution, a factor that would greatly benefit the bottom line for musicians and other creative performers,
“I think artists in the music industry on average capture about 11 or 12 percent of the value in the industry and those big record companies are sucking up 70 or so percent. We can replace those record companies with smart contracts on the Ethereum platform.”
Cryptocurrency, as a whole, has seen positive price traction in 2019 after an abysmal year for coin prices in 2018. While there have been periods of price oscillation, Bitcoin reached its lowest 30-day price volatility earlier in the week since November 2018. In addition, the majority of top cryptos have experienced double digit price gains since the start of the year, with altcoins leading the market. Ethereum has managed a nice rebound in price after falling in valuation with the rest of the industry from it’s all time high established in early 2018.
Last week, analytic firm Electric Capital reported that Ethereum had the most robust monthly developer contribution, generating twice that of second-place Bitcoin.
