A technology investor who backed ridesharing app Uber in its early days has sparked backlash from the Bitcoin community after claiming Bitcoin will inevitably be replaced by something better.
“Bitcoin has been a wonderful game, but with a couple giant players cornering the market, the timing is right to “build a better Bitcoin” — restarting the game,” prominent angel investor and internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis told his 981,600 X followers on March 14.
Calacanis, an early investor in Bitcoin-related companies like online trading platform Robinhood and Bitcoin startup Keza, said, “All technology gets replaced over time… and Bitcoin will be no different.”
Opportunity presents for Bitcoin layer-2 projects
Founders and executives of Bitcoin-related companies were quick to push back, arguing that Bitcoin will not be replaced, though there’s still room for a dominant layer-2 protocol to emerge on top of the Bitcoin network.
Source: Pierre Rochard
Swan Bitcoin co-founder Brady Swenson said, “Winning protocols don’t get replaced; they are built upon.”
“Bitcoin will never be replaced as a protocol for value transfer. The race is still on for the winning second layer protocol,” Swenson said.
The other co-founder of Swan Bitcoin, Cory Klippsten, said, “Bitcoin is a technological revolution changing all industries, not following the adoption curve of a single technology like an iPad.”
Source: Jason Lowery
Echoing a similar sentiment, Lightspark CEO David Markus said, “What it lacks in functionality can be built on L2s.”
“Trying to build a better Bitcoin is a fool’s errand.”
Meanwhile, ShapeShift CEO Eric Voorhees said Bitcoin’s limitations can be solved “on other chains.”
The bigger Bitcoin grows, the “less likely” it is to be replaced
Many in the industry have emphasized the importance of layer-2s for Bitcoin, as they provide use cases that the Bitcoin network cannot support, such as deploying smart contracts.
However, Muneeb Ali, co-founder of Stacks, recently told Cointelegraph that more than two-thirds of existing Bitcoin layer-2 projects will not exist within three years as…
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