David Marcus believes that it will be “another tough year” for cryptocurrency in the wake of the FTX exchange scandal. The former Meta executive has turned into a Bitcoin Lightning Network advocate.
Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto will need up to 2024 to “recover from the abuse of unscrupulous players,” according to Marcus. In a blog post released on December 30, David Marcus, CEO and founder of Bitcoin firm Lightspark, disappointed bulls with his outlook for the coming years.
‘Crypto Winter’ Might Last Up To 2025
Less than two months after the FTX meltdown, these repercussions continue to unsettle sentiment and price performance alike. For Marcus, who is famous for his crypto role at Meta and before that PayPal, bad actors have lots to answer for, and their specter will remain with the crypto sector beyond 2023.
While mentioning the FTX exchange just once, he referenced what he termed as “unscrupulous players” dragging out market underperformance even beyond the coming year. He summarized:
“We won’t exit this ‘crypto winter’ in 2023, and probably not in 2024 either. It’ll take a couple of years for the market to recover from the abuse of unscrupulous players, and for responsible regulation to come through. Consumer trust is also going to take a few years to rebuild, but ultimately I believe this will prove to be a beneficial reset for legitimate industry players over the long run.”
Should the holders need to wait for their “silver linings,” this could also disrupt the historical patterns Bitcoin specifically has stuck to all through its existence.
Mainly, its 4-year halving cycles, which tend to produce growth in particular years, might see a challenge. 2024, the year of the next halving, is majorly tipped to be a period of bullish price action, with some of them predicting the uptrend beginning a year earlier – in Q2, 2023.
Even if the recovery takes a lot longer than expected, nonetheless, David Marcus thinks that a new and stronger sector will be in place once that happens.
He continued:
“In crypto, years of greed will make room for real-world applications. The years of creating a token out of thin air and making millions are over. The music has stopped. We’re back to our regular programming of having to create real value and solving real-world problems.”
He reserved special attention for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which he stated: “will start to show promise as the world’s most effective open, interoperable, cheap, real-time payments protocol.”
Optimism Thin Into Yearly Close
As reported previously, other large names have also come out in support of crypto’s long-term prospects post-FTX.
Among the most vocal has been the investment behemoth ARK Invest, the CEO of which, Cathie Wood, never minced her words reacting to the events of almost two months ago. A widely-circulated tweet stated in mid-December:
“The Bitcoin blockchain didn’t skip a beat during the crisis caused by opaque centralized players. No wonder Sam Bankman Fried didn’t like Bitcoin: it’s transparent and decentralized. He couldn’t control it.”
In the meantime, in terms of price action, opinions continue diverging over how the first quarter of 2023 might play out.
Buy Bitcoin NowSome think that the worst of Bitcoin’s latest bear market is already over, while others continue to insist on the possibility of a deeper BTC price drop to $10,000 or lower.
Bitcoin was trading around $16,500 on December 31, based on data from TradingView, continuing to shun lots of volatility with hours to go until the 2022 yearly candle close.
