Crypto Prices Decline; Ethereum Co-founder Claims Last Year’s Surge Was a Bubble

Cryptocurrency prices experienced a decline on Thursday, following comments from Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, who described last year’s surge in crypto prices as a bubble.

At 1:40 AM ET, one of the cryptocurrencies was down 0.4% to $6,303.7 on the Bitfinex exchange. Another prominent cryptocurrency traded 0.6% lower at $284.1 on the same platform. Additionally, one more cryptocurrency slipped 1.4% to $0.28159 over the past 24 hours, while another fell by 1.5% to $54.946.

In an interview with a financial news outlet, Lubin expressed that speculative traders are fueling the volatility in the market. However, he is not overly worried that the recent price drop will hinder the development of essential infrastructure and adoption in the sector.

He stated, “We’ve seen six major bubbles, each more remarkable than the last. Each bubble is astonishing in the moment, but in retrospect, they resemble just small blips on a chart. With every bubble, we experience a significant surge of activity, which is what we’re observing now.”

The digital currency market had shown signs of recovery after its market capitalization fell to around $190 billion earlier in the week, significantly down from approximately $835 billion in January.

Chris Yoo, a portfolio manager at Black Square Capital, commented via email, “The crypto market seems to be nearing the end of its bearish trend. This correction was expected given the overvaluation of many blockchain projects and the prevailing regulatory uncertainty.”

In other developments, Ripple’s vice president, Jeremy Light, expressed the company’s interest in the Chinese market and its distributed ledger technology aimed at accelerating cross-border payments.

“China is certainly of interest; it is definitely a target,” Light shared in an interview. He emphasized that China is a significant region for their strategic focus, noting the presence of major financial technology firms such as Ant Financial and Tencent in the country.