Last week, an article by Bloomberg about Vitalik Buterin shocked a large part of the cryptocurrency space, Ethereum holders and believers in particular. According to the article, Vitalik said that there is no chance that the cryptocurrency and blockchain space will see “1,000-times growth” again. Now, Vitalik responds to all the angry tweets and messages he received, stating that his words have been misinterpreted.
According to the article from Bloomberg, Buterin told Bloomberg at an Ethereum and blockchain conference in Hong Kong that the rapid growth of crypto and blockchain industry is now reaching a “ceiling,” and is moving from “just people being interested” to the stage of “real applications of real economic activity. Buterin explained that the period of explosive growth in the sphere is likely coming to an end because the level of superficial awareness about the industry has significantly grown, and is likely to plateau.
Vitalik said:
“If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchain at least once. There isn’t an opportunity for yet another 1,000 times growth in anything in the space anymore.”
The article caused a storm on social media channels like Twitter, with a lot of investors disagreeing with Vitalik. Many are mad and blame Vitalik for making things worse in the current bearish market. The price of ETH has been declining steeply over the past weeks. Even Buterins partner, Joseph Lubin, also one of the co-founders of Ethereum, responded to these comments when speaking to CNN saying:
“Vitalik is brilliant, but I would have to disagree with him on that. This is a technology that’s going to impact how economic, social and political systems are built over the next few decades. So we’re really just at the start of this. There will be so much evolution.”
Now, after a rant on Twitter, Vitalik gave his views on the future growth of crypto.
To be clear, I never said that there is "no room for growth" in the crypto ecosystem. I said there is no room for *1000x price increases*. A 1000x price increase from today means $200T in crypto, or ~an entire 70% of today's global wealth being in crypto.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 12, 2018
Vitalik then went on to say:
What I *actually* said is that, because large portions of the population have already heard of crypto, further growth of crypto in any sense must come from *depth* (ie. actual usage), and not bringing in more attention
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 12, 2018
Last but not least, Vitalik mentioned:
Me: obviously, let's be realistic, the entire world wealth is not going to turn into cryptocurrencies…
Media: VITALIK IS A PESSIMIST!!!!!1!!1!
Guys, if you spin things this way you're *incentivizing* people to act more like @justinsuntron
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) September 12, 2018
It looks like Vitalik was misunderstood and that this is just a tempest in a teapot. Fortunately!
Crypto markets have seen a dramatic decline in terms of total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies during 2018. In January, total market cap of all cryptocurrencies hit $828 billion. The peak in total market cap has been followed by a gradual downturn – with a rebound upwards in May – that has led to the current figure of $186 billion, the lowest point since early November 2017
