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The answer depends on the time frame. I read his statement, and it wasn't clear to me if he's talking about 1000x in a month, in a year, or in ten years. Also, the overall cryptocurrency market didn't even move 1000x last year, and I'm only aware of a couple of coins that did, which could have been outliers. It's certainly possible that we'll see diminishing returns overall from here, but that doesn't make cryptocurrencies a bad bet, and it's still possible that we'll see 1000x pumps. If 1000x pumps are just random flukes, then expecting one this year is no more or less sensible that it was last year (which is to say not very sensible).
Also, consider that the market cap for all cryptocurrencies right now is below 200 billion USD, whereas gold sits around 8 trillion and fiat currency around 80 trillion (check out the graphic in the article below). There are a lot of shitcoins, no doubt, and the market will continue to move up and down, but ultimately we're talking about cryptographically secured stores of value vs. hunks of metal or trust in institutions. This isn't to say that we should hold our breath for a 90 trillion market cap, but there's still a long way to go before crypto is truly mainstream.
To summarize, I am confused by Vitalik's statement and believe the 1000x thing is a red herring because we didn't see that kind of growth on average last year either.
Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-big-is-bitcoin-really-this-chart-puts-it-all-in-perspective-2017-06-21