Andreas Antonopoulos is an educator by profession, an avid Bitcoin bull, and a seasoned Bitcoin user. Antonopoulos has also written a handful of books on various topics concerning crypto space.

Antonopoulos is considered as one of the more reliable voices in the decentralized ecosystem. Recently, he sat down for an interview with Youtube channel “Singularity Web”, where he presented his views on various topics and recent controversies with Bitcoin.

The interview started with the most cliche Bitcoin interview question, “Why Bitcoin, given the present banking systems have kept up with the technological change over the 50 years?

However, Antonopoulos responded with statistics to begin his answer, he explained,

“Only 15% of the human population actually has access to banks… Hence, the privileged cannot imagine needing the system… But its there… Think about South America… People, there are not happy with their economy or Government… Countries with inflation problems”

The interviewer then asked Antonopoulos about his views on the current “Bitcoin vs Blockchain” debate, whether he agrees with the recent views of certain analysts and financial institutions who say Bitcoin and cryptocurrency might die, but its the underlying blockchain technology that would win the long terms race.

Antonopoulos seemed to have a separate view than the majoritarian belief, he said Blockchain is just about the secure database which is possible to distributed ledger available universally for anyone to verify. He went on to add that blockchain technology on it own won’t gurantee  immutability and trust. It is only through possible use cases like Bitcoin which enhance the DLT and add Proof of Work over it to bring  immutability and trust in the system.

Antonopoulos also has a pretty interesting take on the current “Bitcoin vs blockchain” argument and gave an analogy whiich many of us would remember for quite some time, he said,

“Bitcoin vs Blockchain is exactly the same as Facebook vs the open internet infrastructure.. People say that we are very excited about open-internet and Facebook is the internet, isn’t it? No, it's not.” He added, “Facebook is a centralized, control infrastructure.. It is a terrible argument for many reasons.”

Antonopoulos is One of the Truest Bitcoin Bulls

He emphasized his argument, because he believes that Bitcoin has done wonders for bringing independent peer-to-peer cashless payment network into the mainstream which has eventually helped many developing nations like Venizuela and other South American nations to come out of their financial distress brought upon them by crony capitalism followed by their respectiive governments.

However, Bitcoin with all its usps lack of one very important aspect, which is privacy. However, Antonopoulos believe the second generation layer of Bitcoin with Segregated Witness (Segwit) and Lightning Network (LN) is working towards addressing those issues as well.

He went on to add,

“Bitcoin has continued to work like a Heartbeat.. producing a block every 10 minutes for the past 10 years… It provides independence, empowerment, neutrality, borderless operation and open access.” He also added that “the fact that it is still there is the real testament to the robustness of the technology.”

Antonopoulos has seen all the cryptocurrencies starting from Bitcoin, and now looking at the progress that the crypto space has made despite the fact that many centralized financial institutions called it a mere bubble and even a ticking time bomb waiting to burst. The same institutions have come around to not only offer crypto services into their system but JP Morgan, the biggest Bitcoin basher has launched its own stable coin in the form JPM coin.

Antonopoulos says Bitcoin has been the pioneer of the crypto space and it would be the ultimate digital token to achieve the status of the daily driver whenever the time comes. He said that Bitcoin will win the long term race, no matter how other altcoins believe to be superiors be it centralized blockchains like Ripple or even forked coin like Bitcoin Cash. He implores that greed and investment in Blockchain is only the tip of the iceberg, and one must use and experience the technology before giving in to speculation and short-sighted thinking.