Interview with Mpho Dagada. Hoskinson shares his story about bitcoin mining that began in 2011. In 2013, the Bitcoin price rose 250-fold, from $1 to $250. Hoskinson decided to enter the sector because he was passionate about leading major projects.
Inception Ethereum
Hoskinson says that initially, a Chinese entrepreneur approached Hoskinson to help him create a stablecoin. He needed $500,000 of funding. Tether (USDT), as well as other stablecoins, were not available at the time. Market investors could use them to hedge the cryptocurrency’s value against the US dollar. He declined the offer and met Dan Larimer who is the founder of BitShares. They worked together to create the first decentralized cryptocurrency exchange platform. Larimer and he had some disagreements, which led to him leaving the company.
He then met Vitalik Buterin and Anthony Di Iorio to create Ethereum. Hoskinson elaborates:
“[Anthony said to me] Vitalik is a young man who was 19 years old, and has written a great piece of white paper. It’s hard to make heads or tails out of it. Do you think it is possible to read it? Let me know your thoughts. Anthony agreed. So I took a look at the paper. It was quite rough, but I thought there was something. That’s how Vitalik Buterin and I met each other.
Hoskinson met with the other founding members of Ethereum, including Buterin and Joseph Lubin, Di Iorio and Gavin Wood, at the North American Bitcoin Conference in January 2014 to officially launch and develop Ethereum. He added:
“The North American Bitcoin conference, January 2014. Anthony rented a beachhouse, and we each bought our own ways. We met Joseph Lubin and Gavin Wood, who are big men now but were not back then. This was the birth of Ethereum.
Ethereum has grown over the years
The cryptocurrency industry has seen rapid growth in terms of market infrastructure, blockchain systems and scaling. In 2014, Ethereum was launched. This year saw the emergence of decentralized applications (dApps), and the first decentralized computing systems in the world.
Ethereum enabled the initial coin offerings (ICO) market. This allows blockchain projects to raise billions to develop their protocols. The EOS, which was led by Dan Larimer raised more than $4 billion and was the largest ICO ever.
Hoskinson created Cardano in 2015, the first Proof-of-Stake blockchain protocol. It was specifically designed to handle dApps as well as payments. Cardano has two layers that maximize scalability. Since then, both Ethereum and Cardano has experienced rapid growth. These companies continue to work hard for a brighter future.
