Ethereum [ETH] carried out its very controversial yet highly anticipated shift to Proof-of-Stake [PoS] in September. The network garnered immense backlash for changing its algorithm. Accusations about how the network wasn’t decentralized anymore began surfacing. While Ethereum brushed off these tags, Paxful’s CEO wasn’t quite content.
Earlier today, Paxful’s CEO Ray Youssef penned down a letter announcing that ETH would be delisted from the exchange. Youssef noted that starting December 22, ETH would no longer be available to trade on Paxful. While this came as a shock to many, Youssef noted that “revenue is nice, but integrity trumps all.”
Paxful’s CEO started off by highlighting the mission of the exchange. He pointed out how BTC frees billions of people. However, the shift of ETH to PoS defies the same. He added,
“Proof-of-work is the innovation that makes Bitcoin the only honest money there is, whereas proof-of-stake has rendered ETH essentially a digital form of fiat. ETH is not decentralized. It is controlled by a small group of people and one day you will need permission to use it.”
In addition to this, the Paxful CEO credited ETH for having had real use cases. This included credit and lending. But, it mainly thrived on tokenization, he suggested. Youssef further said,
“The tokens that ETH has spawned have been scams that have robbed people of billions. They have stolen valuable momentum away from Bitcoin and cost us years on our mission.”
Therefore, Youssef believes that it was pertinent for Paxful to protect its users. He pointed out how this wasn’t a great move in terms of money or popularity. But it was the right thing to do.
Will Paxful’s latest move bring down ETH?
At press time, Ethereum [ETH] was trading for $1,214.92 with a 0.05 percent daily surge. It should be noted that the asset encountered a major drop of 8.68 percent over the last couple of days. As of now, the asset did not endure any downfalls.
Earlier this month, Youssef revealed that ETH’s volume on Paxful was “quite small.”