Crypto marketplace Paxful removes Ethereum from its Marketplace

Paxful CEO Ray Youssef highlights Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake, perceived centralization and token minting ability as reasons for the move.

On November 2022, when FTX collapsed, Youssef, the CEO of Paxful, urged cryptocurrency users to shift their BTC holdings to self-custody storage. He also encouraged Paxful users to do the same.

In addition to Ether, Paxful has deleted other crypto coins from its platform

Ethereum’s native token, from its marketplace, citing a number of concerns around the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization.

Paxful CEO Ray Youssef made the announcement in a tweet to some 11.6 million users.

Ethereum was finally removed from our exchange. 11.6 million people were protected. Economic integrity prevailed over financial success. Who is next?

Youssef stressed the importance of handling concerns in the Ethereum ecosystem and led to the marketplace removing ETH. Paxful intends to maintain its integrity and fight ‘economic apartheid’ around the world, he said, citing three matters as follows:

According to Youssef, the switch from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus in Ethereum was the first reason for the adaptation. PoW is the ‘unique innovation that makes

‘the only honest money there is’ and that Ethereum has ‘turned ETH into a digital form of fiat.’

Youssef criticized Ethereum for not being decentralized and blamed its tokenization feature as a driver of scams and fraud in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

In November 2022, Paxful’s CEO was a leading supporter of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, asking users to keep them on their own computers. Youssef urged cryptocurrency users to keep their BTC in self-custody storage, and PAXful users were also encouraged to do so.