On December 21, 2022, the CEO of Paxful, a global peer-2-peer crypto trading exchange and digital wallet, sent an email to Paxful’s 11.6 million users announcing his decision to remove Ethereum (ETH) from the Paxful marketplace.
No. We need maximum momentum behind one clearing layer to win and bitcoin is the only game in town. This isn’t an investment strategy, this is humanity rising up to liberate itself. ALL IN !
— Ray Youssef (@raycivkit) December 21, 2022
In his tweet after the email, the Paxful CEO, Ray Youssef claimed the move was not an investment. “This is humanity rising to liberate itself,” Youssef tweeted, “We need maximum momentum behind one clearing layer to win and bitcoin is the only game in town.”
Youssef stated in the email that ETH would no longer be available to trade on the marketplace from December 22 (UTC 12:00), citing three reasons for the move.
The first is ETH’s switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. While ETH 2.0’s move to proof-of-stake was motivated by the problems with scalability proof-of-work presents, Ray Youssef does not see it that way. According to Youssef, Bitcoin is the only honest money due to its reliance on proof-of-work, and ETH’s switch has turned it into just a digital fiat.
Secondly, Youssef says ETH is not decentralized. The switch to proof-of-stake makes the majority of Ethereum’s validators large entities. This concentration of power is worrying to some, and Youssef makes it known he is one.
Finally, Youssef criticizes ETH’s reliance on tokenization. ETH’s spawned tokens have scammed people of billions and stolen valuable momentum from Bitcoin, Youssef says. According to reports, an estimated $11 billion worth of ETH has been stolen by fraudsters using 153 centralized exchanges between September 2020 and December 1st, 2022.
Ray Youssef promised to put purpose before profit, and fight what he calls economic apartheid being perpetuated by Ethereum’s actions.
Reactions to the Paxful decision have been split between those who share the CEO’s vision and those who do not. Critics called Ray a ‘maxi’, short for Bitcoin Maximalist, a term that refers to people who consider Bitcoin the only digital asset needed in the future, and all other cryptocurrencies inferior to BTC. Based on Youssef’s words, the Paxful CEO likely does not consider the term disparaging. In fact, he referred to Cardano as junk in a reply to one comment on his tweet.
While ETH is now delisted on Paxful, stablecoins still remain and USDT and USDC trades are still possible. Youssef admitted stablecoins are a must for real use cases. Thus Paxful is not Bitcoin-only. At least, not yet.
