Paxful CEO Ray Youssef said Ethereum is being removed from the platform due to its shift to proof-of-stake and lack of decentralization.
The second-largest cryptocurrency in the world by market capitalization by peer-to-peer exchange Paxful has withdrawn Ether (ETH $1,213), the native token of Ethereum, from its marketplace. Paxful CEO Ray Youssef made the announcement in a message to the platform’s 11.6 million users, which he later published on Twitter.
Youssef cited Paxful’s intention to uphold its integrity and efforts to prevent “economic apartheid” around the world caused by fiat monetary systems as reasons for the marketplace’s removal of ETH, highlighting three fundamental concerns with the Ethereum ecosystem:
“I want to see a world where Bitcoin frees billions of people held back by this evil system, especially those unnecessarily harmed living in the global south.”
The initial justification for the change was Ethereum’s transition from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus. Youssef stated that Ethereum’s switch to PoS has transformed ETH into a “digital form of fiat” and that PoW is the “innovation that makes Bitcoin (BTC $16,815) the only honest money there is.”
Additionally, Youssef attacked Ethereum for not being decentralized and pointed to the protocol’s potential to enable asset tokenization as a source of frauds and fraud throughout the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
“The tokens that ETH has spawned have been scams that robbed people of billions. They have stolen valuable momentum away from Bitcoin and cost us years on our mission.”
After FTX’s demise in November 2022, Paxful’s CEO became a prominent supporter of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency self-custody. Youssef urged Paxful users to move their BTC holdings to self-custody storage and urged cryptocurrency users to do the same.
