Smart Money: Nischal Shetty of WazirX on what's next big crypto bet

Recently, El Salvador has approved Bitcoin as legal tender, half a million users have adopted new bitcoin wallets in El Salvador and the big question now is where else could Bitcoin become legal tender and will 2021 be the year when India finally clarifies laws around cryptocurrencies and makes it legal.

In this new episode of 'Smart Money', CNBC-TV18's Sonia Shenoy spoke to Nischal Shetty, founder of WazirX, on the next big altcoins to invest into.

Shetty said, "In the beginning, it was just Bitcoin and for few years, people just believed Bitcoin would be the only crypto. After a while, you had these new kinds of cryptocurrencies starting with Ethereum and then quite a few other cryptos followed, and they started being seen as alternate currencies or alternate coins and that is where the term altcoin came in. So anything that is crypto, but it is not, Bitcoin is nothing but an altcoin. It is a very important thing to understand and to get into crypto, you need to understand what altcoins are."

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He said, "The whole term 'Ethereum Killer' is more like more sensational, rather than I would say the reality. We will see a lot more blockchain projects emerge and that is because Ethereum alone cannot satisfy all the use cases and all the demand that exists today, globally. So you can always look at new blockchains that will probably come and solve the problems that Ethereum does not solve today."

"One of the most common problems that people see in Ethereum is that it is expensive to make transactions, especially when there is a lot of demand. So there are quite a few of these alternate blockchains that have emerged. For example, there is this blockchain called Matic from India, which is trying to solve the whole Ethereum, high gas fee problem by bringing a cheaper alternative to running more transactions," Shetty said.

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"Similarly, you have quite a few other blockchains like Solana. Again the competition for Ethereum is other blockchains that are cheaper in terms of running transactions. Recently, there was news of Cardano, which brought in smart contracts. Now to compete with Ethereum, you definitely need smart contracts. Smart contracts are how you can run your programmes on top of a blockchain. So existing blockchains that were previously competing with Ethereum are now bringing smart contract options inside them to compete with Ethereum. So, the easier way is to say that we want to be the next Ethereum Killer, But I think if you go deep, you will realise that it is all an ecosystem being built. Everyone needs others to coexist, and I see that increasing as we go along."