The largest blockchain companies will be bigger than Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google, according to Alex Mashinksy.

That comment was made Tuesday afternoon at the 2018 Benzinga Global Fintech Awards on “The Age Of Blockchain: What To Do Now That The Future Of Finance Is Here” panel.

'Money Is Bigger Than Anything Else'

“There are millions of people who think this is a scam and they can’t understand why people will spend any time in this category," said Mashinksy, CEO of Celsius Network. "You’re definitely going to have consolidation, but I’m betting 5-10 years from now, the largest players in the crypto world are going to be bigger than Google or Apple. Because the market is much bigger. Money is bigger than anything else.”

Danny Aranda, Managing Director of Business Development at Ripple, believes money is going to start much more fluidly.

“During this conversation, millions of packets of information have flown from our phones," he said. "We believe money will flow in the same way, where different blockchains will be constantly talking to each other.”

Is The U.S. Falling Behind Other Nations When It Comes To Blockchain?

Panel moderator John Hart, Director of Trading at TD Ameritrade (NASDAQ: AMTD), asked what the future of public and private blockchains are. He wondered whether we will live in a world where there are a few public chains that everybody uses, or will you just pick a chain off a shelf like an Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) server?

The panelists agreed that blockchain will eventually become decentralized, but they expressed some concern about the current regulatory environment.

“We live in a regulated environment, where you don’t know what the impact of having a truly decentralized blockchain could mean for governments,” said Raj Karkara, Managing Director tZero at Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK). “But eventually I do see that we will be on a decentralized public blockchain.”

Alex Mashinsky, center. Photo by Mandar Parab.

When it comes to the widespread adoption of blockchain, the United States is stuck in no-man’s land, according to Mashinksy.

“Somebody can steal your data and win an election, and no regulation is being issued for that. But God forbid you try to transfer money to the blockchain, and all of a sudden we need regulation.” he said.

Mashinsky noted there’s around 130 public blockchains right now, and over 3000 tokens. But with each state doing their own thing when it comes to regulation—Mashinsky singled out South Dakota’s lack of regulation compared to New York—and it’s making things harder for the U.S. to stay ahead of the pack in countries looking to take control of the space.

“We can’t live in an environment like this where each state decides what they want. We’re stuck right now. We’re not looking like a progressive country, but we’re not looking like China.”

Follow along the two-day event on Twitter with the hashtag #BZAwards.

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