Earlier this week, Civic CEO Vinny Lingham brought some much needed bullish optimism to a cryptocurrency event in Johannesburg, South Africa. Speaking at The Chain Reaction event, hosted by the Blockchain Entrepreneurs Club of South Africa (BECSA), Vinny spoke highly of the future of cryptocurrency and blockchain. Alongside Vinny were other prominent figures in the cryptocurrency space, including Monero lead maintainer, Riccardo Spagni.
During his talk, Vinny explains why prices will climb to new all-time highs in the future.
“Do I think we’ll have another bubble? Probably, because people just don’t learn…Once it broke through $20k, it would run to over $100k and then we have the start of a new bubble bust cycle.”
Famous for his position as a “shark” on South Africa’s version of Shark Tank, Lingham has previously called cryptocurrencies mankind’s “biggest technological experiment.” Still bullish on cryptocurrency, he recognizes that this technology is still in its early days: “Even though we are about a decade into blockchain technologies, we are still in the infancy.”
Even with this positive outlook, Lingham does hint that the optimism must be kept in check. He recognizes that the majority of the users of cryptocurrency are traders, simply using the technology to turn a quick buck: “Primarily the number one use case for cryptocurrency outside of money transfers is trading. It’s mostly a speculation game.” This claim clearly has some substance, as most of the BTC/USD trading volume is on BitMEX, a derivatives exchange, that doesn’t actually buy or sell Bitcoin.
Lingham warns that although there is a lot of money entering the space, it’s important to stay focused on developing the technology: “You shouldn’t do this stuff for the money, you should do it because you’re passionate about what the goals of the project are.”
He also explained why he thinks the price of BTC (and every other cryptocurrency) exploded last year. In his opinion, the explosion of ICOs is what pushed the prices to unprecedented highs. Despite ICOs propelling the market forward, Lingham recognizes that the market is now suffering from an ICO hangover, and ICOs are having trouble getting started.
“Last year, we saw an indicator of a massive amount of investor interest in the space and not enough supply…right now you have way more supply of ICOs than buyers, and with the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies dropping, those buyers have less money to spend.”
Despite this, Lingham advises that the best thing to do right now is focus on accumulating for the future: “I have seen three or four bear markets and cycles…In bear markets, it is more about consolidating and going into high-quality coins like Bitcoin.
