Emin Gun Sirer, the creator of the world’s first proof of work, or PoW, crypto, stated that as much as 95 percent of cryptos are nothing but scams. Currently, more than 5,000 diverse cryptocurrencies are traded with a total market cap of almost $250 billion.
Sirer, the creator of the first PoW-based crypto, the Karma System, is confident that the vast majority of cryptos are no tech advances, and only exist to grab money from people.
Sirer slammed crypto projects like Facebook’s Libra in an April 29 AMA session with Equilibrium EOSDT for wanting to compete with major fiat currencies, like the US dollar and the euro, while not creating anything new.
A computer scientist and professor at Cornell University, Sirer believes that the vast majority of crypto projects venture their initiatives as new methods of payment, while Bitcoin (BTC) was the first to do so more than 10 years ago.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a method of payment, but Bitcoin did it first,” Sirer argued, adding that “trying to compete with that is a stupid thing to do.”
Sirer Denies Being Bitcoin Maximalist
Sirer designed the first PoW crypto protocol back in 2003. This was about five years before Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, published the Bitcoin white paper. The scientist emphasizes that he is far from being a Bitcoin maximalist. However, Sirer does support Bitcoin maximalists who believe that as much as 95% of cryptos are useless.
Sirer said:
“I hate the Bitcoin maximalist approach. I’m a science-driven person. If there is a good thing out there, I’m the first one to call it out. But they’re right in labelling 95% of the things out there as scams. It’s just a money grab with somebody’s initial coin offering […] They are pushing a coin with a system that doesn’t advance the world.”
Instead of creating a technology that is changing worldwide, most crypto projects are following the same model that Satoshi set out, Sirer noted. “People like Justin Sun are walking around like they have something special, but they’ve just recycled something that belongs to someone else,” he said.
