Ethereum is the new Apple – Steve Wozniak

By Raghav Sawhney

Highlighting the capabilities that the platform-model Ethereum offers, Steve Wozniak, Apple Inc. co-founder and one of the most widely followed technology stalwarts, said, “Ethereum interests me because it can do things and because it’s a platform.”

Speaking at the WeAreDevelopers conference that concluded on May 20 in Vienna, Austria, the technology guru further added that the Ethereum platform was just like his former company Apple, and in the long term, it has the potential to “become as influential as his company became,” as reported by Forbes.

During the speech last week, he described the path-breaking blockchain technology as “the next major IT revolution that is about to happen,” and predicted that both blockchain and cryptocurrencies will achieve what was idealised in around a decade.

Wozniak has been bothered by what technology has become, especially referring to Facebook’s recent fiasco with Cambridge Analytica.

“We used to be able to have conversations in secret with people. If I were to say something to you in private now, others wouldn’t hear it — that isn’t the case anymore,” Mr Wozniak said. “We lost our security a long time ago. We’ve lost our privacy and it’s been abused. If I think I have a level of privacy that I don’t, that’s deceit. And that bothers me. I hit a limit. I can’t take that. It’s one step in a long series of steps that are all in the same direction.”

Wozniak has had prior involvement with cryptocurrencies, including both possession, and criticism. He had previously commented on how Bitcoin is so much better as an alternative to gold and the Dollar.

At the Money20/20 event last October, Wozniak described fiat currencies as “kind of phoney” for they can be altered and manipulated by governments for political reasons, while gold also lacked a fixed supply.

“There is a certain finite amount of Bitcoin that can ever exist,” he said. “Gold gets mined and mined and mined. Maybe there’s a finite amount of gold in the world, but cryptocurrency is even more mathematical and regulated and nobody can change mathematics.”

Steve had purchased a few Bitcoins for a price of around $700 each to experiment but sold off almost all earlier this year as he obviously got tired of the irregular change in Bitcoin’s value.

“I had them so that I could someday travel and not use credit cards, wallets or cash. I could do it all on Bitcoin,” he said in an earlier statement. “I studied which hotels and facilities accepted Bitcoin…it’s still very difficult to do so. I also tried to buy things online and trade Bitcoin online.”

Steve had in fact lost seven Bitcoins due to a credit card scam earlier this year.

(For more, see Steve Wozniak: Bitcoin Scammer Stole My Cryptocurrency.)

Wozniak continues to maintain one Bitcoin and two Ether tokens.