Ray Youssef, CEO, and co-founder of Paxful, announced plans to remove Ethereum from the platform. He revealed this on Twitter and emphasized that the “revenue is nice but integrity trumps all.”

Working to remove eth from our marketplace. Revenue is nice but integrity trumps all https://t.co/k57ZYgGdqT

— Ray Youssef (@raypaxful) December 12, 2022

The statement was in reaction to Jeremy Garcia, the CEO of the Bitcoin education website, who criticized Ethereum as having poor design and not adhering to the fundamentals of bitcoin.

According to Lithium Ventures Chief Product Officer, Tom Littler, the first principles are criteria used to help you differentiate the wheat from the chaff. In brief, these are decentralization or a new system of ownership, incentives to encourage positive social behavior, and no middlemen.

Garcia went on to criticize the project’s complexity, claiming, “ETH will fail due to this complexity and the potential changeability it brings at the fundamental level.”

As an engineer, I understand that ETH is a very poorly designed protocol that does not follow 1st principles. ETH will fail because it has too many variables. ETH is a foundation of sand. #Bitcoin is a foundation of granite. Watch @jimmysong explain here https://t.co/0OoXQjdFHU

— Jeremy Garcia (@jerimican5445) December 12, 2022

During the Africa Bitcoin Conference, which ran between December 5 -7, Youssef pointed out that Paxful’s business model is worlds apart from FTX. He also noted that the platform offers trading in Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDC, and USDT.

When asked about Paxful’s ETH volume, Youssef disclosed the amount is “quite small,” but it was initially added due to user demand. However, in light of recent developments, the firm has a bigger responsibility to drop ETH.