Ethereum developer: Spacemesh is ‘greener than bitcoin or ethereum mining’

Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger details her interview with Ethereum Core Developer Lane Rettig on the future of blockchain technology.

Video transcript

KARINA MITCHELL: And so I want to turn your attention to crypto at the moment. And we can see from the numbers that they are both in the red. Bitcoin just at 55,000, Ethereum at around 4,300. But one former core developer of Ethereum spoke exclusively with Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger and made his case why the future is bright for the digital asset. Jennifer, what did he say?

JENNIFER SCHONBERGER: Hey, good afternoon, Karina. Yeah, I had the opportunity to speak exclusively with one of the former core developers of the Ethereum cryptocurrency, Lane Rettig. We talked about the future of crypto, Ethereum, and what could possibly be the next generation of Ethereum. He told me that Ethereum is going to vie with Bitcoin to be the dominant cryptocurrency for the next 5 to 10 years. He says that the fact that Ether issuance has been coming down has led to a more deflationary scenario for that crypto. And that's why we've been seeing the price surgance this year over Bitcoin.

He says, in general, crypto reminds him of gold when it first started trading back in the 1970s. There was a lot of volatility, but some of that volatility settled out eventually, as that commodity matured. He thinks the same thing is going to happen here. He says because it's basically a supply and demand story. The fact that Bitcoin is supposed to be capped at 21 million units means that he thinks that the price of Bitcoin is only going to continue going higher from here. He says he struggles to envision how Bitcoin could not reach a million dollars a coin at some point in the future.

And for that, he really points to the country of El Salvador that's been buying up Bitcoin. And he says that other countries are probably going to follow suit. And there's going to be so much demand. And therefore, that is really going to send the price of Bitcoin skyward. He says there's going to be a lot of bouncing around, though, in the meantime as that proceeds.

He's actually no longer working on the Ethereum platform right now. He's working on a brand new blockchain called Spacemesh. He says it's more eco-friendly. It could possibly be the next generation of Ethereum. He says that anyone who has a laptop could really mine for this and earn the points. And it doesn't suck up the amount of energy that mining for Bitcoin does. Take a listen to what he told me.

LANE RETTIG: Two years ago, I kind of changed gears and helped launch this Spacemesh project. It has two key differentiators. The first, as you alluded to a second ago, is that it's greener than Bitcoin or Ethereum mining, in the sense that instead of using proof of work mining, which, obviously, requires-- its very energy intensive, right? We use an alternative form of mining called proof of space time, which involves committing a certain amount of free hard drive space. So anyone, any device anywhere in the world who has, say, 100 gigabytes free on their laptop or their computer can plug that into the Spacemesh protocol and immediately begin mining and earning coins.

JENNIFER SCHONBERGER: There's a lot more coming from my exclusive interview. So stay tuned for that full interview coming on Monday. Back to you.

JARED BLIKRE: Well, Jen, while we have you here, I want to direct our attention to the YFi Interactive, where I have our heat map for crypto. And we're seeing a little bit of pressure here. And what I'm noticing, in particular, Bitcoin, this is a year-to-date chart. Let me get it down to an intraday. Bitcoin has actually become more correlated, that I can tell, with some of the traditional markets.

And, you know, we had that downdraft in equities today coinciding quite nicely with what we saw happen in Bitcoin. So I'm just wondering if the people you talk to in your interviews, on the Street, wherever, your Thanksgiving conversations about Bitcoin, what's the consensus, or what are they thinking about how Bitcoin is going to fit into the asset classes of the world?

JENNIFER SCHONBERGER: Yeah, I mean, it still is a very new emerging asset class, but it's continuing to trade as a risk asset, as you mentioned. It's highly correlated with equities. And so folks that I'm talking to are closely watching a lot of the macro factors that affect equities globally to see what direction Bitcoin is going to move. So I think over the longer term, though, they do point to inflation and continue to believe, in many cases, that it will hold a store of value. They think that as long as central banks continue to print money, that there is no question that more people are going to want to own cryptocurrencies.

KARINA MITCHELL: All right, we will have to leave it there. Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger, thank you so much for that exclusive report.