Crypto-winter will give way to real innovation in the cryptocurrency industry, says Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian

Alexis Ohanian, the founder of Reddit and Managing Partner at Initialized Capital hailed the cryptocurrency industry, stating that the “nascent” industry is still growing despite the prolonged “crypto-winter.”

In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Ohanian discussed Reddit’s ongoing development, censorship within social media websites, regulation of the internet and the volatile cryptocurrency market. The interviewer, Yahoo Finance’s Andy Serwer described Ohanian as a “firm believer” in cryptocurrencies.

Since the collective market cap touched $800 billion, marking the conclusion of the crypto-boom, the market has suffered under the bears. Its collective market cap has fallen to its present value of $134 billion. Acknowledging the “crypto-winter,” Ohanian said,

“This is the crypto-winter, no doubt.”

Ohanian referenced Coinbase’s Brian Armstrong, who said that the current market sentiments are the “spring of crypto innovations.” With this statement, Armstrong meant to suggest that the price depression weeded out investors and speculators, the ones that were in the market to make a ‘quick buck.’ According to him, the ones remaining are the “true believers.” These believers are the ones that will build the infrastructure for this industry, Armstrong said.

While agreeing with Armstrong, Ohanian said,

“They are actually builders, they are actually building the infrastructure that is going to take to really make this happen.”

Despite some reservations about the industry,  Ohanian stated that these problems will be solved by the people that remain after the prices have declined.

“Some of the smartest people I know in tech are working on solving these problems, they’re building companies that are built on the blockchain. The hype is gone, the fervor is gone, but I think that’s a good thing.”

Ohanian is a long-time supporter of the cryptocurrency community, investing in Coinbase through Initialized Capital back in 2011. The Reddit founder added that he was willing to bide his time and allow the virtual currency industry to grow. He said,

“We’re very comfortable having a long world-view on it, because this kind of an infrastructure shift will take lots of time, and we knew that going into it.”

JP Morgan’s surprising entrance into the cryptocurrency realm with their dollar-backed, “JPM Coin,” was also mentioned by Ohanian. He added that Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon’s complete U-Turn from calling Bitcoin [BTC] a “scam,” to launching a digital asset was a sign of things to come.

He stated,

“These are just more indications that there is real innovation that is happening, now that all the wild speculation is gone.”

Ohanian closed by offering a piece of advice to investors in the “nascent” cryptocurrency industry,

“If you’re investing in it (cryptocurrencies) in the first place, you really should’ve been thinking long term.”

Earlier in 2018, the Reddit founder had made a bold price prediction, stating that Bitcoin would reach $20,000 while Ethereum [ETH] would trade at $15,000 by the end of the year. However, the dawn of the crypto-winter proved him wrong.

The post Crypto-winter will give way to real innovation in the cryptocurrency industry, says Reddit Founder Alexis Ohanian appeared first on AMBCrypto.

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