How Dogecoin is like a Cabbage Patch Doll

Dogecoin is tumbling after a stunning start to the year.

Brian Brooks, the new CEO of crypto exchange Binance, says that’s to be expected: Dogecoin is a lot of fun, and maybe even a good investment, but it’s not the future. It’s a novelty rather than a potential financial market disruptor like bitcoin.

First Move’s Julia Chatterley spoke to Brooks Wednesday.

How is dogecoin like a Cabbage Patch Kid?

Brooks: Here is the funny thing when you have a market: There are all kinds of stocks that ultimately won’t be useful and won’t succeed and many go to bankruptcy. I’m not saying that dogecoin will do that. It seems to be a novelty item. But it is not a token that is powering a fundamental network like ethereum is. There are things that are really changing the world. And the point about exchanges is to bring about all of those to the market so that customers can access which ones are most useful.

And is it about an exchange being an on-ramp for a broader understanding?

Brooks: I think that you have it right. And I think about exchanges as on-ramps that ultimately won’t be necessary in their current form five years from now. If you think about fax machines or scanners, they were a funny sort of intermediate technology, where, to use a document on the internet, you had to first print out a piece of paper and sign it and then get it on to the internet using the scanner. But now we have docusign and other tools to allow us to never leave the internet. And i think ultimately finance will have migrated into the digital age and so at that point we’ll be fully network native just as we are for everything else.

And so you are saying in five years time Binance will be unnecessary?

Brooks: No, I guess what I’m saying is at that point these companies will be radically transformed into platform companies providing services.