Ethereum to Hit $1,000 in 2019 and Its Best Developers Are Millionaires: Aragon Co-Founder
Luis Cuende, co-founder of Aragon, an Ethereum-powered company that raised $25 million in less than 15 minutes in a token sale, is bullish on Ethereum.
He said every good Ethereum developer he knows is a millionaire since there is a gold rush to learn Ethereum’s coding language. Cuende also believes Ethereum’s price will hit $1,000 in two years.
All of this bodes well for Aragon, an Ethereum-based project that seeks to build a more global world where intermediaries and borders don’t limit organizations, businesses and individuals. Cuende laid out his plans for Aragon in an interview with Sindre Hopland, writing in itnig.net.
Three Main User Groups
Aragon’s immediate goal is to be a decentralized transaction platform, Cuende said. There are three main user groups expected to begin using the platform in the fourth quarter.
The first will be blockchain projects that use the platform to govern products.
The second will be open source project users who contribute to projects and pay with the projects’ tokens to secure governance over the product being built. Monetization of open source has been challenging, which is what Aragon hopes to change.
The third group will be distributed companies that can easily pay employees in Ethereum tokens.
Ethereum Soars, But Is Still A Bargain
While Ethereum’s value has soared this year, Cuende doesn’t think it’s costly. When the price was $13 a year back, he thought it was expensive, but today, considering the possibilities the technology creates, he thinks it is cheap.
Cryptos are not in a bubble in his view since they remain a small portion of the world economy. In addition, cryptos have not realized their potential yet.
One Aragon token, ANT, is worth 0.01 Ether, the equivalent of $2.5 dollars. By the time the network is operating later this summer, the currency’s inflation rate will be determined.
At the present time, 3,000 to 4,000 people own Aragon tokens.
Also read: Ethereum-based Aragon raises $25 million under 15 minutes in record ICO
Aragon’s Opportunity
Aragon originally sought to battle patent patrols which impede entrepreneurs. Cuende said he hit a bureaucratic wall in trying to get patents. When Brexit happened and Trump became president, things changed. Cuende called this period a perfect storm since he wanted to unclutter organizations and networks. That was when the current Aragon took shape.
Aragon is not about removing public regulation, he said, but finding solutions for those who seek to escape bureaucracy. Blockchain platforms allow people to create more value, be more efficient and create new businesses than using traditional methods. Aragon’s ICO in mid-May should not be compared to an IPO, he said, since the ICO does not sell shares to investors. The ICO sells tokens that are more similar to API keys, as noted by Balaji S. Srinivasan.
Aragon now has an infinite runway, meaning it can have its 10+ team for 100 years, Cuende said. During its token sale, it was the fourth largest crowdfunding in the world.
The founders sold 70% of the tokens. Aragon’ foundation owns 15%, with the balance distributed among employees, advisors and founders.
Cuende previously co-founded Stampery, a blockchain identification tool that creates proofs of documents, along with Daniele Levi and Tommasi Prennushi. Draper Associates, Boost VC and Draper Associates are among its supporters. One blockchain expert said there are more people in the space than talented blockchain developers worldwide. Cuende thinks there are even fewer good Ethereum developers, which is why the good ones are all millionaires.
But more than money is motivating blockchain developers, according to Cuende. Building a stable coin pegged to global currencies that will follow the euro’s and dollar’s value in the markets is an interesting proposition. Cuende said Aragon is integrating these coins later this year, and it will hopefully remove the volatility that crypto suffers from. The company plans to employ 10 to 12 full-time members by year’s end.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
