Range of Reactions to the Ethereum Crash
Ethereum suffered a flash crash on the GDAX exchange, plunging from $319 to 10 cents per single coin in a second. The exchange blamed a “multimillion dollar market sell” order for the problems. Many ethereum traders lost large sums of money, and GDAX said any trades that occurred during the plunge are final and will not be reversed.
Here are some reactions to the news from industry leaders, which come just as ethereum appeared poised to overtake bitcoin’s market cap leadership position:
Chris Burniske of ARK Investments:
“Yesterday was rough for ethereum and I’m sure it has more rough days ahead.”
Bill Shihara, Bittrex CEO
“Digital currency markets are extremely volatile as they continue develop liquidity and maturity. The volatility brings opportunity for experienced and sophisticated traders. We recommend that new customers use the appropriate amount of caution when trading.”
Kevin Barnes, Blocksafe CEO
“Confirms that many significant use cases for DLT technology are driving us into new territories thus creating an unexpected demand in the space.”
Yonatan Ben Shimon, Matchpool CEO
“I think it was a pure technical event that has no real meaning. But because someone made profits from it – it gave Ethereum more attention in the mainstream channels and more people became interested in Ethereum.”
Chris Kitze, FlashCoin CEO
“There are two messages here. 1) It shows true demand for ETH and that’s a very good thing. 2) It exposes a fundamental weakness in the scaling. There will be other weaknesses, such as the transaction fees, which I think could bankrupt smaller companies or limit the utility of ETH. We haven’t even talked about the potential security issues with ETH, as well. It’s not fully tested.”
Ibrahim Mohammed, OneGram CEO
“Well, I think it looks like the monopoly that ETH was creating has backfired on its investors. They were monopolizing and pumping recent ICO in a bid to boost ETH prices. These pump-anddump schemes have a short life and are not sustainable. Similar to pyramid Ponzi schemes, the masses always lose. ETH was going down a similar route and has done massive damage to the crypto market. This further affirms our position that investors will switch to a more asset-backed solution when these conventional crypto bubbles burst. I’ve said these bubbles will burst, but it is happening even sooner than I had expected. The future is asset-backed.”
