Peer-to-peer cryptocurrency marketplace Paxful has removed Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native token, from its marketplace, citing a number of concerns around the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.
“Revenue is nice, but integrity trumps all,” said Ray Youssef, announcing ether’s (ETH) removal from the marketplace he founded and runs.
Youssef outlined three key issues with the Ethereum ecosystem that prompted Paxful to remove ETH from its marketplace, citing the company’s desire to uphold its integrity and its attempts to combat “economic apartheid” throughout the world caused by fiat monetary systems.
The initial justification for the move was Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. Youssef said that Ethereum’s switch to PoS has transformed ETH into a “‘digital form of fiat” and that PoW is the innovation that renders Bitcoin BTC $16,809 the “only honest money there is.”
“Proof-of-work is the innovation that makes bitcoin (BTC) the only honest money there is, whereas proof-of-stake has rendered ETH essentially a digital form of fiat,” he claimed. ETH is “controlled by a small number of people and one day you will need permission to use it,” he continued.
Additionally, Youssef criticized Ethereum for not being decentralized and pointed to the protocol’s potential to enable asset tokenization as a source of frauds and fraud throughout the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Youssef claimed Paxful will keep allowing trade in the stablecoins tether (USDT) and USD coin (USDC), in response to queries on Twitter, although he didn’t seem very excited about it.
Paxful CEO A Strong Advocate for Bitcoin
Paxful is a peer-to-peer marketplace that is popular in Africa, a region Youssef believes will see mass adoption of bitcoin due its financial inclusionary potential. After FTX’s demise in November 2022, Paxful’s CEO became a prominent supporter of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency self-custody. Youssef urged Paxful customers to move their Bitcoin assets to self-custody storage.
