While the price of Bitcoin (BTC) remains stagnant around its bear market lows and people continue to argue over whether or not we’ve hit bottom, there are others in this industry who see past the price. There are those who stay focused on what 2019 has in store for Bitcoin and the crypto industry as a whole.
One such individual is Ari Paul, Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner at crypto asset investment firm BlockTower Capital, and prominent crypto influencer with over 135,000 followers on Twitter. Paul recently addressed his large following with a series of tweets proclaiming that 2019 will be the year of the crypto intranet.
1/ It's increasingly looking like 2019 will be the year of the crypto intranet (or permissioned blockchains, or bankcoins and corporatecoins), whatever you want to call them.
— Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) March 1, 2019
2019: Year of the Crypto Intranet
Paul’s thread starts off by proclaiming that permissioned blockchains issued by banks and large corporations will be an ongoing trend in 2019. He compared this upcoming trend to the “intranet” era in the 90s, when corporations and banks tried using closed intranet networks instead of the internet.
Just as corporate intranet networks were ultimately unsuccessful, Paul acknowledged that these bank and corporation-issued blockchains have little to offer when compared to their decentralized and global counterparts. Those who understand the crypto space and ideology of censorship resistance, seizure resistance, depreciation resistance, and self-sovereign money will find corporate cryptocurrencies like the JPM Coin and Facebookcoin inherently uninteresting.
While Paul infers that these permissioned coins are inferior to decentralized networks, he notes that the big-name permissioned coins can greatly benefit permissionless cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) by increasing global awareness.
“Things like Facebookcoin increase global interest dramatically… Let’s say 300 million people adopt facebookcoin, and 1 in 10 of those stumbles across bitcoin as they explore it. That doubles the number of bitcoin users, increasing the pace of adoption, the network effects, and the value of the bitcoin network.”
Adding to this last statement, Paul explained that things like Facebookcoin will bring about the infrastructure and services needed not only to support permissioned coins but the permissionless cryptocurrencies as well. It should vastly increase the rate of adoption as merchants and consumers will be integrated with the technology.
Global Interest in Cryptocurrencies Will Dramatically Increase
Another interesting perspective brought to light by Paul is that explaining cryptocurrencies to the masses will be far easier than it is currently. Once the public knows about something like Facebookcoin, it can easily be compared to Bitcoin, and people will soon understand why Bitcoin is better.
As put by Paul:
“Instead of having to explain from scratch what a cryptocurrency is and why it’s interesting, now we get to tell legions of already interested people why Bitcoin is better than Facebookcoin for many things. We’ll have an eager instead of a reluctant audience.”
To end off his rant on why permissioned coins will boost global interest in cryptocurrencies, Paul explained that it will be way easier to point out the critical flaws in a well-followed thing (Facebookcoin) and inform people of a great alternative, Bitcoin (BTC).
Do you agree with Ari Paul that permissioned coins will increase the awareness and adoption of permissionless cryptocurrencies? Will 2019 be the year large corporates and banks launch their own coins? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
