David Marcus, founder of Bitcoin (BTC) payments firm Lightspark, disappointed crypto bulls hoping for a quick crypto market recovery, as he predicted that the bear cycle will likely last through 2024. In a blog post on Dec. 30, Marcus, who was the co-creator of Meta’s scrapped crypto project Diem, wrote:
“We won’t exit this “crypto winter” in 2023, and probably not in 2024 either.”
He added that the crypto market requires a “couple of years” to get over the “abuse of unscrupulous players” and for appropriate regulations to kick in. Additionally, Marcus said that investor trust, which was severely shaken by the series of rapid high-profile bankruptcies, will also need a few years to rebuild.
The crypto firms that collapsed in 2022 include hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), lenders Voyager Digital and Celsius Network, and the most recent, FTX, followed by lender BlockFi. The collapse of these firms impacted millions of users, who collectively lost at least $10 billion.
Marcus called the “rapid house-of-cards style collapse” of the crypto firms a repeat of the “ugliness of the earlier years of Wall Street’s greed.” Specifically, the downfall of FTX, Marcus noted, added a “very unnecessary dose of drama” to an already awful year.
On an optimistic note, however, Marcus added:
“… ultimately I believe this [long crypto bear market] will prove to be a beneficial reset for legitimate industry players over the long run.”
Marcus’ prediction of a persisting crypto winter suggests Bitcoin may not see a bull run during its next halving, which is expected to occur in 2024. Historically, BTC has enjoyed a bull run through its halving years — 2012, 2016, and 2020.
Irrespective of whether the crypto market recovers before 2024 or not, Marcus said that the “years of greed” will make way for “real-world applications.” He noted:
“The years of creating a token out of thin air and making millions are over. The music has stopped.”
The crypto market is returning to the normalcy of creating “real value and solving real-world problems,” Marcus wrote. This would lead to an increase in innovation in 2023, especially in payments, asset securitization, decentralized finance (DeFi), zero-knowledge (ZK) applications such as proof of reserves, and layer 1 scaling solutions, Marcus expects. He added that 2023 might also bring a renewed focus on the Bitcoin network.
Additionally, Marcus expects that 2023 will be when the Bitcoin…
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