Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto will need until at least 2024 to “recover from the abuse of unscrupulous players,” says one of the industry’s most prominent names.
In a blog post released on December 30, David Marcus, CEO and founder of the Bitcoin company Lightspark, disappointed the bulls with the prospects for the coming years.
Marcus: “Crypto winter” will last until 2025
Less than two months after the FTX meltdown, the repercussions continue to unsettle sentiment and price performance alike.
For Marcus, famous for the role of crypto in Meta and before PayPal, bad actors must be answered a lot, and the specter will remain with the crypto industry beyond 2023.
While mentioning FTX only once, he mentioned what he called “rogue players” that dragged down the market’s poor performance even beyond next year.
“We will not come out of this ‘crypto winter’ in 2023, and probably not in 2024,” he summarized.
“It will take a few years for the market to recover from the abuse of unscrupulous players, and for the regulation of responsibility to come through. Consumer confidence will also take a few years to rebuild, but in the end I believe this will prove to be a useful reset for legitimate industry players in the long run.”
If hodlers have to wait for the “silver lining”, this may disrupt the historical pattern that Bitcoin has been embedded in throughout its existence.
In particular, the four-year semi-annual cycle, which tends to produce growth in certain years, may be challenged. 2024, the next half year, is increasingly considered a period of bullish price action, with some predicting an upward trend from the previous year – in Q2, 2023.
Even if the recovery takes longer than expected, Marcus believes that a new and stronger industry will emerge once it does.
“In crypto, the year of greed will make room for real-world applications,” he said.
“The years of creating tokens out of thin air and making millions are over. The music has stopped. We’re back to regular programs where we need to create real value and solve real world problems.”
He paid special attention to the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which he said “will begin to show promise as the most effective, interoperable, low-cost, and real-time payment protocol in the world.”
Optimism thins towards the annual cap
As Cointelegraph reported, other big names are also coming out to support the long-term prospects of crypto post-FTX.
Related: Bitcoin ‘not undervalued yet,’ says research as BTC price drifts nearer to $16K
Among the most vocal is investment giant ARK Invest, whose CEO, Cathie Wood, has not minced her words in response to what happened nearly two months ago.
“Bitcoin block does not skip beats during the crisis caused by opaque centralized players. No wonder Sam Bankman Fried does not like Bitcoin: it is transparent and decentralized. He can not control,” said widely-circulated. tweet declared in mid-December.
In terms of price action, opinions continue to differ on how the first quarter of 2023 could play out.
Some believe that Bitcoin’s latest bear market is over, while others continue to warn that the price of BTC will go deeper to $10,000 or lower.
BTC/USD traded around $16,500 on December 31, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed, continuing to avoid major volatility in the hours leading up to the 2022 annual candle close.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.