Crypto Could Take 10+ Years to Regain 2017 High, But Then Will Be Mature: Cardano Founder

Crypto markets might need more than a decade to regain 2017’s price highs, but the industry will a “dramatically different ecosystem at that point,” according to top altcoin Cardano’s (ADA) founder, Charles Hoskinson. The industry expert made his comments in an interview with Cointelegraph at the Crypto Finance Conference, Jan. 17.

Hoskinson compared crypto’s major growth spurt in 2017 with Amazon’s performance during the dot-com bubble. The entrepreneur — who is also the co-founder of Ethereum (ETH) — noted that it took 11-12 years for the internet giant to recover its all-time highs at the peak of the bubble. He argued that by 2011-2012, the firm was a “very much more mature company, much more realistic company.”

According to Hoskinson, crypto as an industry could experience a similar growth pattern. The expert argued:  

“It might take 11 years for us [the crypto industry] to recover back to where we were in 2017, but we will be a dramatically different ecosystem at that point. We'll have millions, perhaps even billions of users. We will be in many consumer products, be easy to use, [even] grandma can use it. A lot of the hard stuff will have been figured out. Like if somebody dies, how do we get their private keys, how do we handle taxes, all of the regulation will be done.”

Another key point for the evolution of cryptocurrencies is to attract institutional investors, Hoskinson said. Wall Street is constantly waiting for new assets to invest in, he claimed, and crypto developers have to present a reasonable roadmap to achieve greater adoption.

Apart from money, the founder claimed that institutional investors will bring better regulated marketplaces to the crypto space, stating:

“Institutional investors are pretty picky. They're very intelligent investors, but then they also require an ecosystem of sophisticated trading strategies and tools [...] They need derivatives, they need options, they need to get a short sell, and if our markets can get these things, what will happen is that you'll no longer see this massive volatility.”

Institutional adoption has been a major topic of discussion in the crypto sphere this past year. For instance, Mike Novogratz, an ex-Goldman Sachs partner and founder of crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital, said in October that institutional demand will bring Bitcoin to new highs in Q1 or Q2 2019.

Nonetheless, a recent study published by the Global Blockchain Business Council shows that the vast majority of senior business executives are not committed to crypto and blockchain in particular. Moreover, 63 percent of execs barely understand what blockchain actually is.