Leading cryptocurrency industry figures have opposite views on if Bitcoin will become the global digital currency of choice.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is continuing his campaign to talk up Bitcoin whenever he can.
Fresh from giving a speech in Scandinavia, Wozniak arrived in Amsterdam to give a glowing endorsement to digital currency Bitcoin – even though he says he only owns one coin.
Wozniak told his audience that he agreed with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that Bitcoin would triumph as the world’s major currency within a decade.
“I buy into what Jack Dorsey says, not that I necessarily believe it’s going to happen, but because I want it to be that way, that is so pure thinking,” said Wozniak.
Wozniak at odds
“Bitcoin is mathematically defined, there is a certain quantity of bitcoin, there’s a way it’s distributed and it’s pure and there’s no human running, there’s no company running and it’s just growing and growing.
“There is a certain amount of bitcoin that can ever exist. Gold gets mined and mined and mined. Maybe there’s a finite amount of gold in the world, but cryptocurrency is even more mathematical and regulated and nobody can change mathematics.”
But Wozniak’s views are vastly at odds with those of other technology experts and investors.
Billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett argues Bitcoin is a gamble rather than an investment because investors are staking their cash in hope of making money rather than backing a tangible asset.
Bitcoin won’t live up to expectations
“I do not think it’s going to be the panacea that people once thought it would be, where it would solve all of these different kinds of problems,” Garlinghouse said at the same conference as Wozniak in Amsterdam.
“Instead, you’re seeing specializations of different kind of ledgers, different kinds of blockchains.
“There’s some people in this, the crypto space, the blockchain space — for them, it’s almost a holy war of one versus the other. I don’t look at that at all.
“I think that what we’re seeing is the overall growth of this space and there will be many winners.”