Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, asked people not to throw their life savings into virtual coins and warned about slammers offering cryptocurrency on Twitter.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin warned that cryptocurrency investors could lose their money because of the volatility of digital money markets and said that traditional assets are the best from the security point of view.
Reminder: cryptocurrencies are still a new and hyper-volatile asset class, and could drop to near-zero at any time. Don't put in more money than you can afford to lose. If you're trying to figure out where to store your life savings, traditional assets are still your safest bet.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 17, 2018
In December, the Ethereum creator criticized some cryptocurency investors for obsession with flaunting their cryptocurrency-derived wealth. He compared wild investment in the cryptocurrency market to the record sum paid for the world’s most expensive painting, Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi.”
Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference. Ethereum is the world’s second most valuable cryptocurrency, with a market worth a staggering $92.4 billion.
A year ago, one Ether coin was worth around $13. In the last couple of months, it’s gone as high as $1,400 and as low as $580. Its current price is $944,95, according to CoinMarketCap. In the last 24 hours, Ethereum lost 0.45% of its value.
As for Bitcoin, it recovered to a price above $10,000 last week after falling as low as $5,948 the week before. According to CoinMarketCap, the current price is $11 492,50 per coin.
Last year, the price of Bitcoin swelled by almost 2000%, and now opinions on the currency’s future vary. Some crypto-experts are pretty optimistic. One analyst said its price will double in the next six months. The founder of Standpoint Research Ronnie Moas believes that Bitcoin price may reach $100,000 in a few years.
Last week, Thomas Lee, managing partner at the financial research firm Fundstrat Global Advisors, said he expected to see a new high for Bitcoin by July.
He said: “Bitcoin recoveries take 1.7 times the duration of the decline and this implies that 85 days are needed to recover prior highs. This is July 2018.”
An official from Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority does not share these views. He said that Bitcoin investors ‘should be prepared to lose all their money’.
Buterin, a 24-old Russian genius, is one of many popular figures impersonated on Twitter by scammers. False accounts promote questionable cryptocurrency offers and often ask users to send an amount of cryptocurrency in exchange for a larger amount. Buterin asked to be careful and not to trust people offering cryptocurrency on Twitter.
Time that it takes for scammers to copy my new profile picture: 10 minutes.
DON'T TRUST ANYONE ASKING FOR OR OFFERING MONEY ON TWITTER.
DON'T TRUST ANYONE ASKING FOR OR OFFERING MONEY ON TWITTER.
DON'T TRUST ANYONE ASKING FOR OR OFFERING MONEY ON TWITTER. https://t.co/wcDAJoh6jD— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) February 18, 2018
To predict the future of cryptocurrencies is impossible. Digital currencies can turn out to be either the future of finance or just a disastrous bubble which will pop one day and leave millions of people in financial ruin.
next