River CEO Has No Interest in Listing Altcoins out of Fear of ‘Forever Hamster Wheel of Memecoins’

The CEO of the Bitcoin (BTC)-focused exchange River says he has no interest in providing access to anything other than the flagship crypto asset.

In a post on the social media platform X, River CEO Alexander Leishman says crypto exchanges that list altcoins – which is almost all of them – have become more like casinos stuck on a “forever hamster wheel of memecoins.”

“There are two paths for a crypto exchange/brokerage:

1. Bitcoin-only path – focus on helping people build and preserve long-term wealth through hard money. This path leads to an exchange looking more like a ‘bank’ long term.

2. Multi-asset trading platform – add as many coins as possible and build the business model around speculative trading. This leads to the exchange becoming more like a casino.

Both can make money, but these are the only two options. The minute an exchange adds one non-Bitcoin token, they are signing up to be on the forever hamster wheel of memecoins. It makes no sense to list ETH if you don’t list the tokens issued on ETH, and the same goes for Solana.

There are many successful crypto casinos, but I have no interest in building such a business. The casino business model is built around maximal extraction from customers, and the Bitcoin only model is focused on helping people build long-term wealth.”

According to River, currency debasement is vastly larger than officially admitted, and is the reason the exchange is Bitcoin-focused.

“There is a 275% gap between the inflation you’re told and real inflation.

This is why we Bitcoin.”

At time of writing, Bitcoin is trading for $82,100.

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