The peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchange Paxful has removed Ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native token, from its market due to fears over the second-largest cryptocurrency’s market capitalization.
Paxful CEO Ray Youssef announced this decision in a message to 11.6 million users on the platform, which he later shared on Twitter.
We finally got up! #ethereal Out of our market. 11.6 Million people safer. Income Integrity Who’s Next? pic.twitter.com/JTJXa5RYJ8
— Ray Youssef (@raypaxful) December 21, 2022
Youssef outlined three primary worries linked to the Ethereum environment that led to the delisting of ETH from the Paxful market. These included the platform’s intention to protect its integrity and to fight ‘economic apartheid’ around the world, which is caused by fiat money systems.
“I want to see a world where Bitcoin frees billions of people held by this evil system, especially those who live in the global south and suffer unnecessary harm.”
The primary cause for the move was Ethereum’s shift from proof of work (PoW) consensus to proof-of stake (PoS) consensus. Youssef stated that PoW, as it is known, is the “innovation that makes Bitcoin (BTC) the only honest money out there” and Ethereum’s transition to PoS changed ETH into a “digital form of fiat.”
Related: Bitcoin Adoption in the Global South — Paxful CEO
In addition, Youssef criticized Ethereum’s ability to tokenize assets, which is a driving force of fraud and scams across the crypto space. This lack of decentralization was referenced as another reason for the delisting.
“The Scams were used to steal billions of dollars from the people who generated tokens with ETH. They Have been robbed Bitcoin We lost years of our mission and gained valuable momentum.”
The Paxful CEO has also been a strong advocate of self-custody of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies following the FTX crash in November 2022. Youssef urged crypto users to switch to self-custody storage for their BTC holdings, encouraging Paxful users to do the same.
