Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian says Bitcoin’s dramatic fall from its all-time-high has wiped out speculators and that’s a “great” thing for the cryptocurrency.
Alexis Ohanian was asked by the Chief Editor of Yahoo Finance, Andrew Serwer, if he’s still a Bitcoin believer.
“So this is the crypto winter, no doubt, but a friend of mine, Brian Armstrong, who’s the CEO of Coinbase, said this is the spring of crypto innovation,” replied Ohanian.
“And what he means is, yes, the prices are depressed, the speculators have fled and that’s great because the people who are now building on crypto are true believers and they’re actually builders, they’re actually building the infrastructure that it’s going to take to really make this happen.”
In May last year, the 35-year-old, who’s married to tennis star Serena Williams, predicted Bitcoin would hit at least US$20,000 by the end of 2018.
While his prediction would prove to be way off the mark, he still bullish on bitcoin long-term.
“What’s a strong signal to me is still some of the smartest people I know in tech are working on solving these problems, they’re building companies that are built on blockchain,” he told Andrew Serwer.
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“The hype is gone, the fervor is gone but I think that’s a good thing.
“And for all of us who have been in this since, I mean, we were the seed investors in Coinbase back in 2011, I think, back when it was a sort of pipe dream of really only devoted engineers.
“We’ve been in this for a minute now and so we’re very comfortable having a long worldview on it because this kind of an infrastructure shift will take lots of time and we knew that going into it.”
JPM coin example of real innovation
According to Ohanian, a strong example of the shift towards Bitcoin is the JP Morgan cryptocurrency.
“Just a few years after him (JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon) calling it a total scam, I think was the quote, but I think these are just more indications that there is real innovation that is happening now that all the wild speculation is gone and I think that’s actually a good thing.
“It’s a painful thing, I think, for a lot of people to see those accounts. But if you were investing in it in the first place, you really should have been thinking long term.
“I think that’s just generally good advice for any kind of investing, but especially something so nascent as crypto.