Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire says that the vast majority of unexpected developments in crypto still haven’t occurred yet.
In a new interview on the Empire podcast, Allaire says that the two things that surprised him were memecoins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“Memecoins and NFTs… The whole phenomenon, and the way in which those phenomena emerged and were popularized. Those were not things that I anticipated. And I can make arguments about the good and the bad. NFTs to me are actually very important technology, very important utility, and NFTs as a pattern is critical in a ton of different ways. It’s interesting, even memes are affinity relationships are really key for communities and for brands and so many others so it’s a really interesting experimental surface.
Those are surprising but now as I actually sit back and think about them, the application of those are pretty significant. If you’re a savvy brand, you’re looking at all of that as something you can build on.”
However, since Allaire believes crypto is only at a stage in its evolution that is equivalent to the internet in the early 2000s, he also thinks most of the biggest surprises haven’t yet unfolded. He anticipates a wave of innovation from apps and other utilities.
“I think so far, I think the surprise is lower than the surprise from the internet, but, you have to put it into context. The ‘Web 1.0,’ I view as where crypto has largely been in a ‘Web 1.0’ equivalent in terms of development and maturation and utility and other things.
When Web 2.0 kicked in, which really was starting in like 2003, and really scaled out from there. That’s actually where I think crypto is right now. So I think the vast majority of the surprises which are going to come from applications and broader utility… I just think we’ll see a lot more surprises. A lot more surprises to come.”
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