Switching over from general conversation about Kyber to what is taking shape in the markets: what are your thoughts on the current market conditions? Is this another boom/bust? Are we consolidating assets into more high quality projects?

I certainly think that the market is still in the re-correction process. We had a good run last year, not only for Ether but for bitcoin and other coins. This is actually a good time for other projects to focus on building and shipping the product instead of getting caught up with the market. Now that the market is calmer, people can actually talk more about long term vision and what they really want to do in this space.

I think in general there will be this cycle every year. A lot of new people are coming in and a lot new projects are trying to introduce their own products. I would say that not many of them would stay here for the long term. In five years from now, what other projects will stay in the top 100 on Coinmarketcap? Is it going to be a completely new list of projects? I’m not sure.

As for more recent news about a Bitcoin ETF: that conversation was hot a few days ago, and there was a lot of optimism about the SEC approving the ETF. However, that decision could be pushed to as late as February 2019. It seems like that conversation influenced the market’s direction in recent weeks.

I’m less interested in ETF and SEC approval. There are still several problems that we need to address in this space, and of course custodian solutions are one. I think many people are trying to address it, but there is no standard and people are not talking to each other to create one. Everyone is working on their own solution in their own space, so it’s very hard to come up with some standard for everyone to follow and implement.

In Switzerland, 3 or 4 companies that I talked to at the Crypto Valley Conference are working on their own custodial solution, and surprisingly they don’t even talk to each other. Like, they are working on the same thing — why don’t you guys just talk to each other and create some standard? It’s the same thing in Singapore — everyone is trying to work on custodial solutions and trying to get ahead of hedge funds. And a lot of hedge funds are trying to jump into this space, but they still need this infrastructure in place to participate.

Even for mainstream users, it is really hard for them to get their first bitcoin. These are the problems that we need to address if we want to increase adoption. Coinbase is doing great in allowing users to buy and sell tokens easily from the Coinbase app, though if the hope of cryptocurrency is to “bank the unbanked” there needs to be a better way for people to buy Ether and Bitcoin and to jump into the space faster.

Blockchain’s “killer app”. I’m sure you’ve seen conversation about that online. Everyone is wondering what the killer app will be. Is it here? Is it far, far away in the future? What does it look like in your mind?

I think it’s very hard to find one killer app, and I’m not sure if it’s going to be something for social networks or messaging like Whatsapp or Telegram, or even another decentralized, secure, and private messaging app. But I think it’s not here yet.

Most of the activities in the crypto space are around trading and investing, but we are really looking towards a future where cryptocurrency and other tokens can be used anywhere, in any application, and in any activity in daily life. If that is possible then I don’t think we even need a “killer app”.

In terms of crypto education: Where was it when you first got involved in the space? What has improved since then, and what else still needs to improve?

I got into the space in late 2013 and early 2014. Back then when I was doing my PhD focusing on blockchain research it was pretty hard to find material online. Most of the content was on bitcoin mailing lists and chat channels. Currently, we have a lot of resources, from podcasts, blog posts, and even books — a lot of people are writing books which is great.

This is another point that I really want to talk about. A lot of people focus on bringing more mainstream users to the space, though I think we forget another target audience that we have to bring into the space, which is mainstream developers — the people that are going to build applications that are going to serve the end users directly.

This is why also at Kyber we are focusing on having our documentation clear and having our API’s ready for anyone to integrate with Kyber easily, and I think that many other projects are trying to do so as well. This is extremely important because we’re not sure if our applications are going to become mainstream, or if it’s going to become the “killer app”.

But if we can bring more developers into the space, some of them might become the next Mark Zuckerberg and may build the next Facebook for cryptocurrency. I think that is more important than getting a bitcoin ETF or getting approval from the SEC.

I think now there are many more resources for developers and researchers to learn about the space and get started with cryptocurrencies and blockchain. However, there is a lot of noise as well. A lot of projects are not really blockchain… many of them claim to be cryptocurrency and blockchain. If you look more carefully, you’ll notice that they are actually a few servers.

I’ve seen a few projects that are definitely very questionable. I’m not sure if you’ve come across FOMO3D… it’s a pretty alarming project, but I guess that founders would say otherwise. For anyone unfamiliar, it is very much a scam/Ponzi scheme.

People know that it is controversial and it’s not going to be here for the long term. But at the same time, we are still seeing a huge amount of activity and adoption compared to other legitimate applications. I’m not sure whether this is where we are heading towards. A lot of funny applications have come up in the space and on other public resources for attention.

Are there any podcasts or other resources that you think are worth checking out?

Podcasts: Unchained (Laura Shin); Epicenter (Epicenter)

Blog: Vitalik Buterin