The blockchain/crypto week in quotes

“Blockchain has been way oversold. I think the fundamental technology is very interesting, but it’s been very slow to roll-out.” Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan 

“There are interesting possibilities with blockchain and to ignore that would be a bad idea. We’re just saying we don’t know the business model yet.” Mastercard CEO Ajaypal Banga

“What we are seeing is a collection of standards being created [that] will inevitably converge over the next three to five years to create a situation where you can move information and value between all these different systems ー not just Bitcoin to Litecoin to Ethereum to Cardano ー but also your regular bank account.” Charles Hoskinson, CEO and Founder, IOHK

“Tech can look big and flashy, and like it can solve all our problems…but the Big Mac burger never matches up to the one in the ad.” Aanchal Anand, a Land Administration Specialist in the World Bank’s Global Land and Geospatial Unit

“I haven’t seen one (blockchain use case) that even scales beyond an individual or a small set of transactions. All of the big tech companies will come and say ‘blockchain, blockchain, blockchain.’ I say, ‘Show me the use case. You bring me the use case and I’ll try it’. I want it to work. Spiritually, I want it to make us better, faster, cheaper, more transparent, more, you know, all of those things.” Bank of America Tech and Operations Chief Cathy Bessant 

“The cypherpunks’ attempts to get into the money business forced them to realise some other things along the way. And [one of those things] is that money is a fundamentally social thing in a much deeper way than, say, two-party encrypted communication,” Buterin continued. “You have to start thinking about governance, social contracts … common shared expectations in this community, how do changes get made, how do we decide how changes get made, how do we discuss things … These are all very political things.

To this day, there are people who will disagree with me,” he continued, “People who will say things on Twitter like, ‘Oh, there is no Bitcoin community, there are just a bunch of people who use the same cryptocurrency.’ I disagree with this attitude.” Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin