Yahoo co-founder believes digital currencies will play a significant role in the future of society, even though bitcoin isn’t “quite there yet”.
Speaking at the sidelines of the Fortune Global Forum in China, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang drew parallels to bitcoin’s volatility and technology stocks from the “early days of the internet”. Refreshingly, the early internet pioneer opted to speak about bitcoin as a currency rather than the go-to narrative of its value at a time when bitcoin price struck a new all-time high of $15,000 today.
“Bitcoin as a digital currency is not quite there yet,” he told CNBC. “People are not using it to transact. People are using it as an investable asset.”
Notably, he added:
I personally am a believer in where digital currency can play a role in our society. Especially in, not only the front end of doing transactions but also in the backend of creating a much more efficient system and a much more verifiable system.
Yang’s remarks about digital currencies like bitcoin ring a similar tune to those offered by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak who sees bitcoin as a cryptocurrency that is “more genuine and real” than the U.S. dollar and superior to gold as a store of value.
“But for now,” Yang added, “it seems like [bitcoin] is more driven by the hype of investing and getting a return rather than using it as transactional currency.”
The technologists’ opinions on bitcoin are in marked contrast, however, to that of JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon who labelled bitcoin a ‘fraud’ recently. A noted bitcoin skeptic, Dimon has previously said bitcoin “is worth nothing” in 2015, at a time when bitcoin was trading under $300. Yesterday, bitcoin’s soaring price helped propel the entire cryptocurrency market cap ahead of JPMorgan’s $360 billion.