The former chairman of Google, billionaire Eric Schmidt, is known as an aspiring bitcoin and blockchain enthusiast, in which he added his opinion that ethereum could become a “powerful platform” whose untapped potential is off-the-charts. Schmidt expressed his opinion during a live event in San Francisco with economist Tyler Cowen, hosted by Village Global.
Throughout a wide-ranging conversation, Schmidt discussed many topics of the future, including technology, corporate governance reform, Google’s hiring practices, and bifurcation of the internet. When asked whether he believed blockchain was overrated or underrated, Schmidt gave a blended answer. “In the public format, overrated. In its technical use, underrated,” he said. “Today, blockchain is a great platform for bitcoin and other currencies. And it’s a great platform for private banking transactions where people don’t trust each other.”
According to Schmidt, new exciting developments are emerging with ethereum that could revolutionize business and society. “I think the most interesting stuff that’s going on are the beginning of execution on top of blockchain — the most obvious example being the capability of ethereum,” Schmidt said.
“And if ethereum can manage to figure out a way to do global synchronization of that activity, that’s a pretty powerful platform. That’s a really new invention,” he continued.
Vitalike Buterin seconds this assessment as CCN reported him denying rumors of stepping back from ethereum development. Instead, he says he’s focusing on encouraging the work of other developers in the open-source developer community.
Eric Schmidt interestingly enough, was even an early believer in bitcoin. Throwing it back to 2014, he praised the then-doubtful cryptocurrency as a unique technological advancement with massive potential.
“Bitcoin is a remarkable cryptographic achievement,” Schmidt said. “The ability to create something which is not duplicable in the digital world has enormous value.”
He continued: “The bitcoin architecture — literally the ability to have these ledgers which can’t be replicated — is an amazing advancement. Lots of people will build businesses on top of that.”
