Mohamed Aly El-Erian: Cryptocurrency can and must survive as part of the payment ecosystem

Egyptian-American businessman and economist Mohamed Aly El-Erian spoke about the position of the crypto market amid a dominant bearish trend. He believes that digital currencies will remain stable for a long time.

“Cryptocurrency can and should survive as part of the payments ecosystem and as an asset class — even if speculative — it just needs to be better regulated,” the entrepreneur said.

At the same time, El-Erian is not sure that crypto assets will receive mass adoption — at least not at the level that most supporters hope for.

“I don’t think bitcoin is a global currency. When people say that we will have 100, 200, 300 thousand [supporters of crypto assets], they are assuming mass adoption,” the expert noted.

He noted that the digital currency market has endured the recent economic turmoil more easily than the stock market. El-Erian also opined that the recent market crash is a classic marker of “most innovation”.

The economist believes that the recent surge in reinforcements has become a prerequisite for relative stability in the markets.

“If you are a supporter of cryptocurrencies, then you should welcome the relative stability that we have seen over the past 2 months,” the economist said.

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, also recently spoke about the crypto industry. He believes that the industry must comply with two key principles: be decentralized and resist censorship.

Buterin is confident that regulation will be able to make digital currencies more attractive to investors, as well as legitimize such assets as a new form of assets. However, it can also change the very meaning of the existence of the industry, in particular, affect the key principles of how cryptocurrencies work.

“I don’t think we should be chasing headlong after large institutional capital. Regulation that leaves the crypto industry free to decide its own internal issues and determine its own path, but makes it difficult for crypto projects to access the capital of large markets, is much less destructive,” summed up Buterin.