Jed McCaleb has been a pioneer on many fronts in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world, he founded the first major bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox, and sold it in 2011 (long before the new owners mismanaged it), he then went on to be a co-founder of Ripple, but left the company in 2014.

Speaking to CNBC Fast Money, McCaleb expressed his belief that cryptocurrencies must be decentralized;

"The real vision is that you have a network, much like the internet, that anyone can participate in. There's not one central entity that can decide that it's going to start charging. This is the way this thing can actually grow and reach ubiquity. That's the key thing to make these things successful" says McCaleb.

The discussion then went into his current project, Stellar, which he founded after disagreements with how Ripple should function, and at one point, blasted Ripple a bit for what he sees as lacking vital decentralization.

"It's very hard to run nodes outside of Ripple Labs (The Ripple team is) running the majority of the nodes, which should be concerning for people." he expressed.

Speaking on his current project, Stellar, McCaleb emphasized why he felt it's important that the company behind a cryptocurrency should maintain a non profit status, which Stellar Development Foundation does, comparing it to the non-profit birth of the internet " Imagine an internet created by a for-profit company, it would just be a very different world."

Ripple currently ranks the #3 cryptocurrency globally, and Stellar has been catching up - currently sitting at #8.