Ever since the arrival of Bitcoin, many people have predicted that “soon” all of the cryptocurrencies will crash. The trends in cryptocurrencies have been compared to global events such as tulipmania, the 1929 stock market crash and the dotcom bubble. However, even after the recent fall in crypto prices, the industry continues to attract new investors.
This time, Yoni Assia, CEO of trading platform eToro, has picked up the dotcom bubble analogy. However, instead of speaking against the technology, Assia has chosen a different path. In an interview with Bloomberg, Assia said that 90% of the crypto startups will “end as nothing” but he believes that these startups have a bigger platform than the ones in the dotcom bubble.
From 1995 to 2000, people invested heavily in “.com” companies which were often formed without proper business models. Nowadays, people can come up with new ideas that can be recorded on a whitepaper for the entire world to read. Since these inventions are creative, millionaires invest in initial coin offerings (ICOs). Even if 1,000 of them contribute $10,000 individually, the entire project can raise $10 million within a short amount of time. For instance, web browser Brave raised $35 million in under 30 seconds last year.
Assia further explained that blockchain appears to be as transformative as the internet was. “Tesla made 2,000%, Facebook made 1,000%, Google made 1,000%. This is the same thing but earlier in the cycle,” said Assia.