Billionaire CEO of American hedge fund Citadel Kenneth Griffin thinks a currency on the Ethereum (ETH) network will replace Bitcoin (BTC) as crypto\u2019s top dog. Citadel manages over $40 billion of capital \u2014 a quarter of the trading volume in the US stock market. <\/p>\n
During this Wednesday\u2019s Nov. 10 DealBook summit hosted by The New York Times, Griffith said that he anticipates that the \u201cBitcoin-based conception [will be] replaced by the Ethereum-based conception in the next generation of cryptocurrencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that Ethereum-based cryptocurrencies have \u201cthe benefits of higher transaction speeds [and] lower cost per transaction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ethereum is only slightly faster than Bitcoin at present, but will significantly scale up transaction speeds and lower costs when Eth2 is fully implemented.<\/p>\n
Griffin is a long-time crypto skeptic, especially of Bitcoin \u2014 which he claims there are \u201cno commercial use cases for.\u201d <\/p>\n
Although he noted that crypto and its underlying blockchain technology is a “really interesting technology\u201d and \u201ca powerful way to maintain a decentralized ledger around the world,\u201d he ultimately said that \u201cfor most problems, it’s really not the solution that we need.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are very focused on a world of new ideas and new creation,\u201d he said, \u201cI worry that some of this passion is misplaced when it comes to cryptocurrencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the summit, he claimed that \u201cthere\u2019s a number of issues that haven\u2019t been addressed by crypto,\u201d including the risk of fraud, high costs, and energy expenditure. <\/p>\n
\u201cBitcoin is incredibly expensive to manage payments on,\u201d he said. It currently costs approximately $4.1 per Bitcoin transaction. Typical credit card transaction fees range from 1.4% and 3.5% on popular networks such as Mastercard, Visa and American Express. The recommended surcharge cost for debit cards is around 0.5%. <\/p>\n
In terms of sustainability, Griffith claimed that Bitcoin is \u201ca bigger contributor to global warming than any form of payment we use around the world today in aggregate.\u201d <\/p>\n
Bitcoin\u2019s annual carbon footprint is around 90.48 tonnes of CO2. Each Bitcoin transaction has the equivalent carbon footprint of 2,008,657 VISA transactions, according to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index. <\/p>\n
On the flip side, Bitcoin mining also utilizes the lowest cost forms of energy, such as renewable energy and surplus power that would otherwise be wasted. It is also significantly more difficult to actually quantify the amount of emissions that banks and financial institutions are responsible for. <\/p>\n