Lots of the financial world’s guru claim that the price of bitcoin is highly dependent on what people think it is worth. And, as it is known, people’s opinions are highly conditional on the way opinion-leaders talk about it.
This week two representatives of the influential personalities in the realm of finance, entrepreneurship, and technology have expressed quite the opposite view on bitcoin and the technology which underpins it – the blockchain.
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In particular, the representative of the Eastern world, a notorious investor and business mogul, running the Alibaba Group, Jack Ma said that in his opinion blockchain is not a bubble, whereas Bitcoin is.
Steve Wozniak, the entrepreneur, and inventor representing the Western world, in his turn, said it’s both bitcoin and the blockchain that is going to blossom within the following decade.
Here are more details concerning their views.
Jack Ma
On May 16, Jack Ma, the constitutor of the Chinese online trading titan Alibaba took the floor at the second World Intelligence Conference in Tianjin. There he raised the issue of bitcoin and its core technology blockchain, saying, however, that the second one is not the bubble. By contrast, bitcoin is the bubble, according to his views.
And Ma’s opinion on the blockchain does not seem to be superficial as he claimed he had been examining this tech trend for years. So now he believes that the blockchain can solve the problems regarding data privacy and online safety for people at all levels – from individuals to companies and authorities – as he emphasized, in the “era of big data.”
Ma added that the issue of security is a primary concern for the online trading Alibaba Group, which reported to have a volume of “trillions of transactions,” whereas its annual earnings constitute $39.9 billion.
He also said that, unfortunately, all the attention surrounding blockchain comes not from the experts but from the “speculator,” who see this core of cryptos as an immense “gold mine.”
However, it is not new to hear concerns over bitcoin from Jack Ma. Last year December he had already been cautious about it, saying:
"I don't know about Bitcoin at all. I'm particularly puzzled. Even if it can really work, the rules of global trade and the financial system will be completely changed. I don't think we are ready. So I'm still paying attention to Alipay... to the US dollar, and the euro. We have a team that studies blockchain, but Bitcoin is not something that I want to pursue. We don't care about Bitcoin."
It is important to note that Ma is considered to be one of the wealthiest men in Asia, whose net worth, as per Bloomberg, has surged to $41.8 billion, making him the richest person in the region last year.
Following the lead of Ma, Alibaba group halted endorsing cyber-coins with Alibaba Cloud rejecting rumors that its freshly set off ‘P2P Nodes’ net was a digital assets mining platform. Last month Alibaba affiliate Taobao tabooed the advertising of products related to ICO.
Steve Wozniak
On the contrary to Jack Ma, Steve Wozniak, the electronics engineer and Apple’s co-constitutor, has always been pretty bullish regarding both BTC and its underlying DLT.
Wozniak, who not long ago sold all his bitcoins and some of which got stolen, spoke at this year’s WeAreDevelopers World Congress 2018, which took place in Vienna, Austria.
There he spoke about these two phenomena, as Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reports, saying that he thinks that the blockchain is a “great idea.” Going on, he said:
“[Blockchain] is the next major IT revolution that is about to happen.”
According to his words, he is optimistic concerning the blockchain because there are a plethora of ways It can be applied in various industries.
Also, ‘Woz’ said that both blockchain and cryptos would reach their full potential in the following ten years. He also cited the top exec of Twitter Jack Dorsey, who earlier said that BTC would once turn into the global “single currency.”
Once again, it is not new that Wozniak speaks affirmatively of bitcoin and DLT. Last year, for instance, at the "Money 20/20" conference in Las Vegas, he claimed that BTC is better than gold and the American public currency dollar.
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