Bitcoin (BTC) and crypto will need until at least 2024 to "recover from the abuse of unscrupulous players," says one of the industry's best-known names.
In a blog post released on Dec. 30, David Marcus, CEO and founder of Bitcoin firm Lightspark, disappointed bulls with his outlook for the coming years.
Less than two months after the FTX meltdown, the repercussions continue to unsettle sentiment and price performance alike.
For Marcus, famous for his crypto role at Meta and before that PayPal, bad actors have a lot to answer for, and their specter will remain with the crypto industry beyond 2023.
While mentioning FTX only once, he referenced what he called "unscrupulous players" dragging out market underperformance even beyond next year.
"We won’t exit this 'crypto winter' in 2023, and probably not in 2024 either," he summarized.
Should hodlers need to wait for their "silver linings," this could further disrupt the historical patterns Bitcoin in particular has stuck to throughout its existence.
Specifically, its four-year halving cycles, which tend to produce growth in specific years, may see a challenge. 2024, the year of the next halving, is increasingly tipped to be a period of bullish price action, with some predicting the uptrend starting a year earlier — in Q2, 2023.
Even if the recovery takes longer than expected, however, Marcus believes that a new and stronger industry will be in place once this happens.
"In crypto, years of greed will make room for real-world applications," he continued.
He reserved special attention for the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which he said "will start to show promise as the world’s most effective open, interoperable, cheap, real-time payments protocol."
As Cointelegraph reported, other big
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