‘Crypto is a damn casino for dum-dums,’ Ethereum developer says

Péter Szilágyi, one of the core developers of the Ethereum Foundation, recently expressed his disappointment with the cryptocurrency industry on his X account.

Amid the ongoing Ethereum (ETH) sell-off on Monday, Szilágyi questioned the focus of the crypto sector, suggesting that participants are more interested in becoming the next Vitalik Buterin and “extracting value” rather than creating useful products and generating real value.

I often wonder if I’m in the wrong industry.

Take SpaceX for example. They send a rocket to Mars? Humanity is moving forward. They fail to send one and blow it up? Humanity learns a lesson and moves forward. All outcomes lead to progress.

In contrast, cryptocurrency is a damn casino for fools…

— Péter Szilágyi (karalabe.eth) (@peter_szilagyi) August 5, 2024

Szilágyi criticized the industry for being impulsive and like a casino where people buy Lamborghinis when prices go up and suffer when prices go down, and said it had made no significant contribution to humanity. He cited companies like SpaceX as examples, arguing that if the industry is not able to create truly useful products, it may be time to shut it down.

Szilágyi noted that Bitcoin (BTC) is at least trying to become a safe asset, but the rest of the industry is making pointless efforts.

Ethereum in decline

This skepticism comes at a turbulent time for Ethereum. The cryptocurrency has suffered a major decline, crashing 32% in a week as the crypto market recorded its biggest drop this year. Ethereum’s current price of $2,360 is down 12.05% on the day, pushing it below the lower Bollinger Band of $2,650, suggesting it may be oversold.

At press time, Ethereum was trading at $2,360, but as of early Monday morning, it was trading at $2,200.

Over 278,000 investors were liquidated in the crypto market in the last 24 hours. Bitcoin led the liquidations with $362 million, followed by Ethereum with $345.7 million.

Total crypto open interest fell 18.7% to $47 billion. The broader cryptocurrency market experienced a significant decline, with global market cap down 13.4% to $1.94 trillion.