Martti Malmi, one of Bitcoin’s earliest developers, shared his journey to bitcoin and his insights into the status quo of blockchain industry with Chinese audience on Monday in Shanghai.

The first core developer in bitcoin project says he communicated with Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of bitcoin, via email and their discussion focused on the project development only without any Nakamoto’s personal information involved. In the late spring or early summer of 2011, Nakamoto cut off contact with him.

When it comes to the core competitiveness of Bitcoin, Martti says the greatest value of bitcoin lies in that it is the first digital currency in the blockchain world which features consensus mechanism. Therefore, the more people use bitcoins, the higher its price will hit.Besides,  bitcoin is a truly decentralized cryptocurrency, as well as the most popular cryptocurrency for use .

As for the recent sharp drop in the price of bitcoin and other virtual currencies, Martti thinks the sector is in a bubble, and  the recent sharp plunge in cryptocurrency prices is signaling that we are in the early stage of the bubble burst, but in the long run, the prices will still go up. And he forecasts bitcoin’s price will move higher in five years .

For the existing blockchains, Martti believes that every project will have their own consensus mechanism, and the popularity of its consensus mechanism is a key evaluation indicator. In his opinion, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the two most successful blockchain projects so far, and more excellent blockchain applications will emerge in the future.

Since the ICO market has not been regulated effectively both in China and other countries, a great number of scam tokens and ICO-backed projects pop up. But thankfully it’s an open market which allows everyone to put his own good idea into practice, such as issuing a cryptocurrency of their own. But Martti believes blockchain industry will move more closer to its maturity with the help of regulatory mechanism and the industry’s self-disciplinary power.