Bloomberg
Crypto’s next big thing raises questions as price rises
(Bloomberg) – Cardano’s meteoric rise over the past three months has attracted the attention of some of the most savvy investors in cryptocurrencies. helps explain the more than six-fold increase since mid-December, making it briefly the third-largest cryptocurrency by market value after stalwarts Bitcoin and Ethereum. Novogratz is not the only one asking what is going on with a network that still lacks many features. available to its more established competitors. That hasn’t stopped it from developing a loyal following on Reddit, similar to many of the so-called meme shares that rose at the beginning of the year. Unlike GameStop Corp, Cardano was able to maintain its upward momentum. Cardano is the brainchild of Charles Hoskinson, a 33-year-old who looks like the PhD student he was before crypto-mania took over his life. He is now a bit of a crypto-rock star, he runs a YouTube channel with 105,000 subscribers, gets fan mail and even gifts from fans, such as a letter written by Albert Einstein and a bronze eagle. “It’s the most surreal part of it,” Hoskinson said in an interview in Longmont, Colorado. “I’m recognized at airports.” While tens of thousands of people watch his YouTube videos, Cardano is still a work in progress. Even after an upgrade that took place in early March, it can still not be used to run many of the most popular applications in crypto, such as projects with decentralized financing that allow users to borrow money, trade with and borrow. The so-called smart contract functionality is expected to come this year. “I’m not aware of a single popular application deployed on Cardano, nor have I seen any enthusiasm for the platform among developers,” said Nic Carter, co-founder of researcher Coin Metrics. “I’m really amazed at why it’s enjoying a revival in popularity.” Cardano earlier reached a peak in early 2018 during the crypto boom and bust, before crashing badly. According to data tracking CoinMarketCap.com, Cardano had a market value of about $ 34 billion this year from about $ 5.6 billion. Maybe investors are buying Cardano’s promise or just fearing they will miss out on profits. It is described as a better Ethereum, which emerged as the innovation hub for projects ranging from DeFi to NFTs, efforts to reach out to digital art on blockchain. With the high transaction fees on Ethereum, developers have been looking at alternative networks like Cardano and competitors Tron and Polkadot. “We did it right, but that means we were one of the last to get on the market,” Hoskinson said. He said he did not know why Cardano’s value suddenly skyrocketed. “It was a wild ride, broken to a billionaire in eight years, is pretty crazy,” Hoskinson said. Hoskinson said Cardano’s security and management of Blockchain are better than Ethereum. allows for applications such as tuning and supply chain tracking. He is less interested in decentralized exchanges like Uniswap and collectibles like digital cats. “My goal is to run countries on this blockchain,” Hoskinson said. ‘I do not care about Uniswap and CryptoKitties and other things. It’s a bubble, and it’s coming and going, like Pet Rocks and Beanie Babies. “More than a hundred companies are in the pipeline, and he wants to switch from Ethereum to Cardano if its functionality expires,” he says. You can use your DeFi and you can use it on my system for 1/100 to 1/1000 of the cost, “he said. Hoskinson dives into crypto as an illicit 20-year-old, who heads the Wall after the financial crisis Street wanted to see roll – – and they did not.After coming across the Bitcoin White Paper in 2010, he looked at all the references and concluded that Bitcoin would fail.However, he began to exploit the cryptocurrency, most said he had given away or spent Skoskinson started the lucrative company IOHK in 2015 to develop Cardano and other cryptocurrency projects, funded by several major angel investors and by an initial coin offering in Asia worth about $ 70 Hoskinson received IOHK 8% of the coin stock, plus about $ 30 million in cash to write code for Cardano, according to Hoskinson, IOHK now has about 300 employees and contractors, while 12 companies in Cardano development we rk, IONK is the largest, he said. Between 2018 and October 2020, the average number of developers actively working on Cardano nearly doubled, according to tracker Electric Capital, which calls this growth ‘modest’. “My job is to set it all up,” Hoskinson said. ‘What I can be is a kind of Steve Wozniak for Apple. Take care of iPhones in the store. Visit us at Bloomberg.com for more articles like this. Sign up now to stay ahead of the most trusted business news source. © 2021 Bloomberg LP