Ethereum Co-founder Lubin: ‘Wait and See’ Seems to Be Tech Giants’ Crypto Plan

Even Ethereum’s co-founder has admitted it’s hard to know what interaction the world’s tech giants are planning with cryptocurrency.

Speaking at the launch of Quartz’s What Happens Next film series last week, developer and ConsenSys co-founder Joseph Lubin said that out of Amazon, Google and Apple, no sure signs were present of a major relationship with the technology.

“Apple seems to be largely uncaring and unaware. Google is making investments, but it’s not clear that they have lot of activity going on,” he said. “Amazon, we’ve not seen that much, so we’ll see.”

Lubin made the comments the same week as a hotly-anticipated conference call from Amazon turned out to be a red herring once again.

No mention was made of Bitcoin integration, which had caused no end of buzz both inside and outside the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the days and even weeks prior.

Blockchain, as always, holds promise Lubin says, with Amazon in particular apt to see casualties from a disruptive competitor.

“I could absolutely imagine a decentralized Amazon,” he continued.

“We’ve seen the pieces. They’re not all connected to one another. They’re not all out or remotely mature, but I could imagine an open platform of many different actors with different roles.”

In the same interview, he put a rare positive spin on the concept that cryptocurrency value was in a “bubble,” adding he hoped it was just an initial phase, with bigger and better bubbles still to come.

“Of course it’s a bubble. Hopefully it’s one in a series of increasingly larger bubbles. These bubbles bring attention, they bring value into the ecosystem.”