Will [Global] Persistence be the end of wipes?

No. There are some fundamental reasons as to why they need to keep wiping the persistence database right now, which is largely because the game is very much in flux at the moment. With every patch, they're changing the format of the data, and pretty dramatically so at times, so it'd be foolish to end the wipes so early on despite this reality. Instead, their goal is to get to a place where the game features are more stable and less tumultuous before they "flip the switch". On top of this, they need a strategy about what they do when they change the formats of data [after they stop wiping], which will happen and won't just stop - they just want to get to a point where they're doing it less often. Chad clarifies that this isn't something that has been forgotten about, and that they've had a few meetings recently to discuss this but it's something they care a lot about. He thinks that they have a really good plan about what to do, long-term, about stopping the wipes, about how they can migrate data, and how they can give the gameplay programmers a methodology to ferry their data whenever they change their formats.
To give a little bit of hope, they are also exploring (but can't promise) potential ways to persist things more permanently sooner, which would be important things like ship purchaces or UEC - things that are seen as important to the Player's progression in the game. They're exploring possibly storing a much more course level data about them, across wipes, so that they can kind of restore Players back to where they were before - their ship might not be in the same place, their gun might not still be equipped, but like the UEC they previously earned, they still have it. That is, it's the higher priority things such as these that they will look into finding a way to persist between wipes, things that negatively affect gameplay when they're reset. Eventually they do want to stop the wipes entirely, but they're looking to start with the basics and having a long-term strategy for stopping the wipes.
Todd adds that another reason why they can't just stop wipes with the release of Global Persistence, is that the in-game ship prices are going to take a long time to tune in and balance, so whilst they don't want to wipe every quarter, they do need to be able to wipe when they need to do so, as they adjust the economy. Apart from just wanting to allow Players to make and keep progress as they play for their own benefit, instead of having to try and achieve their goal within 3 months, it also benefits development to do this because it helps them to test the economy and better understand if things are priced in such a way that the Player(s) can afford them within the time-frame that the Dev's are aiming for, and it depends on the telemetry that they're getting back. Right now they just don't know - they have a best estimate, but they need to be able to see it working consistently in practice for them to properly adjust it.