Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, described cryptocurrency “dangerous” and associated it to gambling in an episode of CNBC’s “Beyond The Valley” podcast aired last Friday.
Berners-Lee said digital currencies are “only speculative” and likened it to the dot-com bubble while talking about the future of the web, in which internet stocks, frequently without a solid business behind them, were highly swollen.
Berners-Lee told CNBC, “It’s only speculative. Obviously, that’s really dangerous. [It’s] if you want to have a kick out of gambling, basically.”
“Investing in certain things, which is purely speculative, isn’t what, where I want to spend my time,” he also voiced.
Berners-Lee said, however, that digital currencies could be beneficial for remittances if they’re instantly converted back into fiat currency as soon as they’re received.
The World Wide Web was invented in 1989 by a British computer scientist. But Berners-Lee has been disappointed with the way his original vision for the web has turned out. Berners-Lee, alongwith John Bruce, is looking to change the future of the internet through his startup Inrupt, with the goal of giving people more control of their data. Both appeared on CNBC’s “Beyond The Valley” to discuss the future of the web.
The future of Web3
Many supporters have spoken about the future of the internet in terms of “Web 3,” a catch-all phrase with an unclear meaning. However, supporters frequently claim that this version of the internet is powered by blockchain technology, which first appeared with the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Web3, according to some, is a decentralized internet which takes power away from conglomerates like Facebook and Google.
However, Berners-Lee stated that the internet’s future is “Web 3.0,” which he differentiates from Web 3. His own proposition for transforming the internet is Web 3.0.
“It’s not blockchain,” Berners-Lee replied, implying that the technology is too slow and insecure.
