Ethereum has 'much higher utility' than Bitcoin, says Guggenheim co-founder Todd Morley

Quick Take

  • Guggenheim co-founder Todd Morley has said that Ethereum has “much higher utility” than Bitcoin.
  • Morley, who is now the chairman of blockchain project Overline, is building a wireless protocol and “the world’s largest NFT museum.”

Todd Morley, a co-founder and former executive of investment powerhouse Guggenheim Partners, has said that Ethereum has "much higher utility" than Bitcoin.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV on Monday, Morley said Bitcoin is "a thing," but "Ethereum to me has a much higher utility through smart contracts."

Any industry that doesn't have a technology strategy to digitize is "going out of business," according to Morley. He gave an example of the insurance industry and said that such industries better have a technology strategy, or "suddenly something shows up, and your walkman looks like an abacus."

Blockchain technology is moving very fast into other parts of the world, according to Morley. He said the number of app developers on Ethereum, for instance, has been growing at a rapid clip for six years straight, "much much faster than Moore's Law, so that's where the action is."

Moore's Law is the observation made by American engineer Gordon Moore in 1965 that states that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles about every two years. In other words, the speed and capability of computers will increase every couple of years, and people will pay less for them.

Morley said the large-scale deployment of Ethereum's utility function and access to assets "hasn't quite happened, and so we're hoping to be leaders in that."

Overline.Network

Morley is currently the chairman of the blockchain project Overline Network. Formerly Block Collider, Overline is an interoperability protocol that is designed to connect blockchains together, enabling Bitcoin to connect to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, according to its website.

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Earlier this year, Overline launched its decentralized marketplace called Interchange that claims to enable collateral-based trading across multiple blockchains without wrapped tokens or gas fees.

The Overline Network has two coins: Overline (OL) and Emblems (EMB). OL is the network's main token while EMB is an ERC-20 token that provides block rewards to Overline miners that stake them.

As for Overline's business model, Morley said the project should make money as OL's usage and value increase over time. Further, as the world moves further into tokenized assets, the digital asset can have more use cases.

It is one of the reasons why Overline, along with the real-estate development group JDS, is building a new 'blockchain tower' in New York. The tower, at 111 West 57th Street, will include "the world's largest NFT museum," said Morley.

"So that's kind of the utility function inside a building rather than just owning bricks and mortar," said Morley. "We think that Overline will be the progenitor of many projects that people can own."

Morley also spoke about the crypto market's price swings during the interview, and said "it's still a very small market, so it's illiquid," and that's just "typical of a young market."

But the utility function of the crypto market, the way to connect people, and the way to create new levels of access is "really spectacular," according to Morley. "We think it's going to be a very very positive development for the world," he said.


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About Author

Yogita Khatri is a senior reporter at The Block, covering all things crypto. As one of the earliest team members, Yogita has played a pivotal role in breaking numerous stories, exclusives and scoops. With nearly 3,000 articles under her belt, Yogita holds the records as The Block's most-published and most-read author of all time. Prior to joining The Block, Yogita worked at crypto publication CoinDesk and The Economic Times, where she wrote on personal finance. To contact her, email: [email protected]. For her latest work, follow her on X @Yogita_Khatri5.