Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson May Be Souring on His Love for Ethereum
Union Square’s Wilson May Be Losing That Loving Ether Feeling
(Bloomberg) -- Fred Wilson, co-founder and managing partner at Union Square Ventures, may be souring on one of his previous favorites in the digital-asset space: Ethereum.
Wilson in 2017 said the market cap for Ether, the native digital token on the Ethereum blockchain, would surpass the value of Bitcoin by the end of that year. It never did, and has vastly underperformed Bitcoin, dropping about 23% from the end of May 2017 to today. That compares with a more than 350% gain for Bitcoin over the same period, according to data compiled by crypto research firm Messari Inc.
“Ethereum, as many of you know, confounds me,” Wilson wrote on his personal blog today. “It has shown the way to so many important things; smart contracts, programmable trust-free computing, potentially proof of stake, and a lot more. But it remains hard to build on, scaling issues abound, and many developers are looking elsewhere.”
While citing many successes in the crypto market to date, Wilson was a bit downbeat in his post. He noted delayed projects and little mainstream adoption of crypto as a payment method.
“There is also plenty of disappointment to be had in crypto right now,” Wilson wrote. “I am an optimist. I am convinced that many of these disappointments will be overcome in the next few years. But it is easy to be bearish on crypto right now.”
He added: “I am long crypto and USV is long crypto. And we are putting more capital into the sector and will continue to do so. But it is not without risks and setbacks. Actually it is full of them.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Leising in Los Angeles at mleising@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Dave Liedtka
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