Bank of America crypto strategist Alkesh Shah thinks digital assets aren’t headed in the direction envisioned by Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
In a new webinar hosted by the Columbia Business School, the Bank of America head of global cryptocurrency and digital asset strategy explains that Satoshi created BTC in reaction to the 2008 financial crisis with the belief that everything should be decentralized and anonymous.
Now, the crypto sector has become far less decentralized and far less trustless, which Shah doesn’t see as a negative.
Explains the strategist,
“I’ve grown up through the internet. The internet was designed to be a decentralized network, and anybody could be anything on the internet. You didn’t have to identify yourself. You could find anything there.
Ultimately, we want some governance and some level of trust, and regulators want a certain throat to choke when something goes wrong, and that is really what makes an ecosystem real, and that’s where we’re going. That’s why [the digital asset ecosystem was] able to have that $1.5 trillion increase in the last three years. Because this part of the ecosystem is not that pure vision of Bitcoin and the pure vision of blockchain.”
Shah also makes a big prediction about the direction of the crypto sector overall.
“If I was going to look at the next $30 trillion for this ecosystem, I would look at the semi-decentralized part.”
A semi-decentralized network typically involves a decentralized blockchain with a centralized entity/company working behind the scenes.
The global cryptocurrency market cap is around $1.95 trillion at time of writing.