Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joseph Lubin was interviewed by Forbes on Saturday, and among other things, he said that he’d love to help China get up to speed with Ethereum technology.
I would love to help China get expert in Ethereum technology. One reason is if the Belt and Road Initiative [a program trying to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks] uses one of the weaker technologies and it sort of mandates that those networks be built in that technology, maybe it won’t be as interoperable. But the main idea is that Ethereum is the strongest of the blockchain technologies and it’s a very positive virus to implant in people’s minds.
Moreover, Lubin said that he hopes China’s central bank digital currency would be interoperable with Ethereum and other blockchains, but seemed resigned to the fact that Zhongnanhai will probably do what’s best for Zhongnanhai. “I assume it is going to be exactly what Chinese leadership thinks is most beneficial to Chinese leadership,” he said. “Hopefully that’s also open and we can interoperate with it, but I don’t know. The country could do the calculation and decide there needs to be a firewall around it, or it could do the calculation and decide, “hey, this is an incredible vector for destroying the American reserve currency status,” which is probably my guess.”
On the subject of China’s potentially Big Brother-esque implementation of blockchain, Lubin said that while he does think there’s instability there, he thinks that the leaders are “constantly terrified” of revolution, “so they have to keep the people relatively happy at some baseline level.”
Photo: Collision Conf