Ethereum Founder, Vitalik Buterin: ‘We’re at the Tail End of a Crypto Bubble’ 🚨 This article is 6 years old...
Ethereum Founder, Vitalik Buterin: ‘We’re at the Tail End of a Crypto Bubble’
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Updated: Nov. 7, 2019 at 2:44 am UTC
Photo by Guile Pozzi on Unsplash
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin is undoubtedly an industry leader and blockchain pioneer. Following a multi-month downtrend, Buterin took to Twitter to share his outlook on the current cryptocurrency market conditions.
Buterin: ‘We’re at the Tail End of a Crypto Bubble’
Since its peak in December 2017, the recent cryptocurrency bear market has taken retail investor and public attention away from the burgeoning blockchain industry.
On July 31, 2018, Buterin replied to a tweet by Post Oak Labs Founder Tim Swanson, displaying the falling web traffic on Coinbase digital asset exchange’s main site.
Is anyone surprised? We're at the tail end of a crypto bubble.
— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) July 31, 2018
The chart shows Coinbase’s total monthly visits at a peak of ~126 million in January 2018 and dropping to nearly 29 million in June 2018, according to data from SimilarWeb.
The decrease in Coinbase’s web traffic seems to correspond closely with the price trends of leading cryptocurrencies during the same period. Buterin’s response, stating that markets have reached the “tail end of a crypto bubble,” suggests that he may believe a market trend reversal is imminent.
Adoption Over Investment
A purist blockchain believer, Buterin has always prioritized preserving decentralization and supporting adoption above driving cryptocurrency price hype.
On July 9, Buterin took to Twitter to denounce the recent Bitcoin ETF fervor and emphasize cryptocurrency adoption over investment.
I think there's too much emphasis on BTC/ETH/whatever ETFs, and not enough emphasis on making it easier for people to buy $5 to $100 in cryptocurrency via cards at corner stores. The former is better for pumping price, but the latter is much better for actual adoption.
— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) July 29, 2018
Co-founder of CoinRoutes, David Weisberger gave a response telling Buterin that both aspects of institutional and public adoption are important. While agreeing, Buterin’s response denoted that the “current level of adoption is imbalanced” – signifying a media focus on cryptocurrency prices rather than actual usage.
Agree, though I personally think the current level of adoption is imbalanced, ie. there's relatively speaking too much investment and not enough usage.
— Vitalik Non-giver of Ether (@VitalikButerin) July 29, 2018
In mid-June 2018, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted a series of tweets delineating his perspective on crypto market cycles and conveyed a similar emphasis on adoption, as a true indicator of the industry’s condition and growth trends.
4/ When there is hype, people are irrationally exuberant. When there is despair, people are irrationally pessimistic. Neither is true. Reality is always somewhere in the middle, more correlated with real usage (transactions per day) than the price.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) June 19, 2018
While in its early stages, it seems the developing digital economy will continue to garner adoption and find its place in everyday usage. With emerging regulations and institutional solutions on their way, it’s evident the cryptocurrency and blockchain sectors are maturing towards legitimacy.
