Bitcoin engineer-turned-instructor Jimmy Song has said that seven months after Joseph Lubin announced a public bet with him concerning the future of Ethereum, the ConsenSys CEO is yet to put his money where his mouth is. It will be recalled that at Consensus 2018 in May, Lubin and Song announced an audacious wager onstage at the event for “any amount of bitcoin” on the premise that the availability of decentralized apps with real user traction will become widespread within five years.
Although the bet was publicised at the time with Lubin in support and Song on the opposing side, the terms and conditions of the wager were left to be ironed out subsequently. In a Twitter post on December 22 however, Song alleged that despite Lubin’s bullish words and consistently confident tone on the subject of building a new decentralised paradigm on Ethereum, he has yet to put any money behind his prediction, which according to him shows that Lubin is not to be taken serious.
Responding to a tweet posted by Lubin, Song wrote:
Don’t believe a word this guy says. Remember, he predicted dApps would take over the world by 2023 and offered a bet to me on stage and 7 months later, has *still* not finalized the bet. Words are cheap @ethereumJoseph , why don’t you put some money behind that mouth of yours? https://t.co/p5r6EyD6So
— Jimmy Song (송재준) (@jimmysong) December 22, 2018
Lubin’s Ethereum Wager
The much-discussed wager has been a bone of contention for months, with both parties never quite reaching a concrete agreement regarding the exact terms.
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In an appearance on the Unchained Podcast in June, Song maintained that bitcoin will always be the prime and valuable cryptocurrency because it is “sound money.” According to him, Lubin would win the bet if five dApps have 10,000 daily active users and 100,000 monthly active users over a 6 month period. Lubin on the other hand, has been consistently non-committal regarding the exact terms he would be willing to agree to.
The reaction to Song’s twitter post varied greatly, with some arguing that Lubin’s extensive investment in the Ethereum dApp space via ConsenSys represents sufficient “skin in the game” as to render such a bet trivial and unimportant. Others pointed out that after several months of operations, ConsenSys is still yet to produce a single successful dApp based on the parameters laid out by Song. Still others argued that even if Ethereum dApps take off as Lubin hopes, that would not say much about Ethereum because dApp technology is still based on Bitcoin.
Song’s accusations come at a difficult time for ConsenSys which has been hit hard by depressed crypto market conditions. On Sunday, CCN reported that Lubin responded to the news of recent ConsenSys layoffs with a denial that the recent reorganisation is significant of any long term downturn in Ethereum’s fortunes.
Featured image from Shutterstock. Jimmy Song photo from LinkedIn.
