“Dangerous, Speculative, and a Gamble,” Berners-Lee On Crypto

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“Dangerous, Speculative, and a Gamble,” Berners-Lee On Crypto
  • World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee calls cryptocurrency, “speculative.”
  • Berners-Lee says, “Crypto currency is not linked to any asset. It is obviously dangerous.”
  • “Don’t keep the currency, get rid of it, put it back into USD immediately,” he says.

Inventor of World Wide Web (WWW) Tim Berners-Lee calls cryptocurrency, “dangerous” and likens it to gambling in an episode of CNBC’s Beyond The Valley.

On the Friday’s podcast, Co-founders of startup Inrupt, Berners-Lee alongside John Bruce, are seen speaking about reshaping the future of the internet. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the way his original vision for the web turned out.


Berners-Lee envisions Web 3.0, a web decentralization project called Solid, as the future iteration of the internet. It is his own proposal for shaping the internet that will give people more control of their data. “It’s not blockchain,” he says, suggesting that blockchain technology isn’t fast or secure enough.

Berners-Lee says that Web 3.0 is unlike Web 3, which runs on a few technologies such as blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens. He goes on to discuss his views about digital currencies:

It’s only speculative. Obviously, that’s really dangerous. If you want to have a kick out of gambling, basically.

Berners-Lee goes on to compare it to the dot-com bubble that crashed after internet stocks without a solid business behind them were highly inflated. He explains that since crypto currency is not backed by anything and has no assets linked to it, cryptocurrency is “obviously dangerous”.

When asked what his take on cryptocurrency investments were, Berners-Lee states:

Investing in certain things, which is purely speculative, isn’t what, where I want to spend my time.

However, he also adds that digital currencies could be useful for remittances, if they’re immediately converted back into fiat currency when they’re received. “Don’t keep the currency, get rid of it, put it back into USD immediately,” opines Berners-Lee. He finds cryptocurrency purposeful since it can be used to immediately transfer money to your family.

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