The recently concluded PreMoney San Francisco 2018 witnessed venture capitalists, investors and officials from various cryptocurrency companies give their insights on the workings of the blockchain industry and the future of the cryptocurrency market.
The panel discussion touched upon how the Initial Coin Offerings [ICO] influx is not as predominant as it was during the cryptocurrency boom of 2017. The panel, which comprised of investors in Coinbase and Cryptokitties stated that 2017 was a crazy year for the fintech industry but the downturn in 2018 can be attributed to the fact that the technology has not really caught up to where it is supposed to be for an actual scale-up.
The investors also focused on how the valuation of the private markets are sky high and once the infrastructure is set up properly, cryptocurrency protocols can be built on it. The discussion also included speakers from 500, an investment company based out of Hong Kong. The official from the organization stated that from a company perspective, 2017 and 2018, have been “crazy” years. She also revealed that according to statistics, the token investments in 2018 have already surpassed that of 2017.
She stated that the performance on the blockchain has to be increased multifold for it to become mainstream as well to enable use cases. The official further added:
“The blockchain industry right now is like the old Motorola phone when it was first released. Remember, it looked like a brick. But that point was the inception of a global technological phenomenon. In the same way, we just need to be patient with the blockchain industry before it becomes huge.”
The discussion also included Jordan Clifford, the Co-Founder of Scalar Capital, who said that the cryptocurrency market right now is in its cool off phase and the valuation bump that the industry saw last year was not at all sustainable and was bound to come down to this point. He added that the long-term outlook of the industry is still bullish but as of now, the entire cryptosphere is still in its ‘Netscape’ phase.
Ethan Beard, the SVP of Ripple gave his perspective on the current state of the fintech industry and stated that the environment right now is conducive for Ripple to initiate cross-border payments. This point comes in the wake of Ripple’s recent commercial release of its product, xRapid, which is aimed to make cross-border transactions more seamless and quicker. He also focused on how the industry was going back to the infrastructure level rather than building on the already established layers. Beard added:
“ I think we need to give companies time right now. All the startups who had raised millions of dollars in ICO’s have not released any products, but that sort of a developmental climate is changing right now. In my opinion startups with less funding apply more creativity to provide bigger and better products.”
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Source: AMBcrypto
Original Post: Ripple SVP says the cryptocurrency market has slowed because it’s building from the infrastructure level
