John McAfee, developer of the first contemporary antivirus software, is a cryptocurrency advocate. McAfee predicts that centralized exchanges will cease to exist within five years, giving way to trustless decentralized exchanges. Such a development will precipitate “the largest economic boom in human history.”
McAfee: Centralized Exchanges Will Disappear in Five Years
Crytpo-centralized exchanges are similar to stock market exchanges such as Nasdaq, CBOE, and NYSE. These exchanges depend on a trusted entity or middleman who controls the flow of the assets being traded. For this service, the middleman demands a fee. For many, this construct is anathema to the philosophy behind Bitcoin (BTC) [coin_price] and other cryptocurrencies.
On the other hand, decentralized exchanges, or DEXs, are trustless. They are independent of a middleman. Therefore, they are more pertinent to Bitcoin’s essence.
Decentralized exchanges, when fully functional, will mark the end of any potential control by governments and will be the beginning of the largest economic boom in human history.https://t.co/GwqQAABLSU
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) September 15, 2018
In an interview with BoxMining, McAfee forecast that the most centralized exchanges are corrupt and they are bound to disappear within five years.
Then DEXs involving millions of wallets residing in smartphones and other devices, distributed around the world, will bring an end to “the war governments.”
Thus, regardless of the power a government has, it will not be able to shut down the crypto market. McAfee explains,
“Because I do not care how much power you have as a government, how many police, how many soldiers, whatever. If the exchange is distributed across 20 million wallets on smartphones and laptops and pads, then what do you do? It is impossible. You would have to shut down all twenty million of them scattered around the world.”
McAfee: We Have to Fight Regulation
During the interview, McAfee also explained why regulations are useless, asserting that crypto technology is helping to create a permissionless society.
McAfee believes that centralized exchanges are corrupt. Customers are not aware of which country they are operating from, nor who owns the exchange. Still, “they process hundreds of millions of our dollars every day.” McAfee adds, “So of course, they become corrupt.”
Therefore, regulations and all the police in the world are useless to protect us since we do not know where the centralized exchanges are. Instead, McAfee says, what does help us are the truth, the blockchain, and our self-interest. He underlines, “The blockchain is an absolute record of truth.”
Before the advent of the blockchain, we never had the truth before, according to McAfee,
“The blockchain is the first technology that says I am the arbiter of truth. CNN tells their truth, Fox News tells theirs, Russia tells theirs. China tells theirs, America tells theirs. The man on the street tells something else. We don’t know. Now we do.” And, Mcafee concludes, “Please understand that truth and regulation cannot coexist.”
What are the advantages of DEXs over centralized exchanges? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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