Eric Schmidt, ex-Google billionaire bets on a rival of Ethereum and Bitcoin

This year has seen major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and 10 others tumble, losing a combined $2 trillion.

As the Federal Reserve pursues a series of aggressive interest rate hikes in its war against inflation, the price of bitcoin has plunged below $20,000 per bitcoin. As such, it is down from nearly $70,000 last year, while the value of Ethereum has plummeted along with it.

While former Google CEO and billionaire Eric Schmidt has said that Chainlink, previously a top 10 cryptocurrency that soared through 2020, has better scale and technology than other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and bitcoin.

During the SmartCon conference in New York held this week together with the co-founder of Chainlink Labs, Sergey Nazarov, Schmidt told “Historically I am a skeptic”, according to news agencies. Schmidt joined Chainlink Labs as a strategic advisor in December of last year.

What is Chainlink

Chainlink is designed to help scale clunky and cumbersome decentralized networks, using software called Oracles to connect data to blockchains. Nonetheless, Chainlink’s cryptocurrency has plummeted by more than 80% since breaking an all-time high in May of last year, outpacing price declines seen by bitcoin, ethereum, and other major cryptocurrencies.

Web3, the idea that a decentralized internet based on blockchains, will eventually replace the Silicon Valley-centric web 2.0 that is dominated by Google and Facebook’s Meta. “It’s not normal,” Schmidt said, warning that ethereum and similar smart contract blockchains are “poor in their capabilities,” with sky-high expectations running “a little bit ahead of reality” in recent years.

Nonetheless, Schmidt said that the long-awaited ethereum merger update in September, which saw ethereum transition from the energy-hungry proof-of-work consensus model, as is the case with bitcoin, to the more efficient proof-of-stake in energy, should be taken as “a sign that the industry is starting up”.

The regulation of crypto

Until then, Schmidt warned that impending crypto regulation could come prematurely. “Don’t ask for regulation ahead of time,” Schmidt added.

Following this year’s huge bitcoin, ethereum, and crypto price boom of 2021, governments and regulators around the globe have begun making regulations that some fear could stifle crypto innovation and the industry.

The Biden administration instructed US government agencies last month to double down on bitcoin and crypto enforcement, which could put the $1 trillion market on a collision course with regulators after the Bureau of Science and Technology of the White House suggested that bitcoin could be banned. Posted by Cryptobtcbrowser, news and information agency.