Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam: Ethereum is ‘Forefront’ of digital currency

In a Medium blog post titled Ethereum is the Forefront of Digital Currency, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam endorses the digital currency and discusses the possibility that it could surpass bitcoin in every way.

Ehrsam explains his theory that bitcoin is too restrictive, resulting in bitcoin-related companies that have settled with developing exchanges and wallets.

“However, we also stand here 7 years into Bitcoin with few apps and no ‘killer apps’ beyond store of value and speculation. The scripting language in Bitcoin has barely expanded and remains very restrictive. While Bitcoin has become embroiled in debate over the block size — an important topic for the health of the network, but not something that should halt progress in a young and rapidly developing field — Ethereum is charting new territory, both intellectually and executionally.”

While Ehrsam recognizes that ethereum would be here today if not for the foundations established with bitcoin, he points out that ethereum is ahead in the following ways:

• Ethereum’s programming language is flexible and easy to learn, whereas bitcoin’s is restrictive and hard to understand.
• Ethereum has a vibrant, growing developer community, while there has been little innovation within the bitcoin space.
• Ethereum has a healthy core development team compared to bitcoin’s fractured team following the departure of Gavin Andresen after his suggestion of increasing the block size.
• Ethereum has an ambitious community set on pushing what the network can do, while bitcoin’s community appears to have a false sense of the size and value of its network.
• Ethereum is making faster, more consistent progress on core protocol while, again, bitcoin has been stuck on the block size debate.

However, Ehrsam also stressed that he didn’t feel that bitcoin and ethereum needed to be in competition with each other. In fact, he explained that everything bitcoin and ethereum have accomplished so far is good news for digital currencies in general.

“It’s all good news for digital currency. Ethereum is pushing the envelope and I am more excited than ever. Competition and new ideas create better outcomes for everyone. Even if Ethereum goes up in flames our collective knowledge in digital currency will have leveled up significantly. I have not given up on Bitcoin and it’s hard to argue with a network that has been so resilient. I, and Coinbase, plan on supporting both,” he wrote.

Coinbase announced the support of ethereum trading last week.

Image via the assets page of ethereum’s website