“Cryptocurrencies are a fucking casino for suckers,” says Ethereum developer

Péter Szilágyi, a core developer at the ethereum Foundation, recently expressed some disillusionment towards the cryptocurrency industry on his x account.

Amid an ethereum (eth) sell-off on Monday, Szilágyi questioned the approach of the cryptocurrency sector, suggesting that participants are more interested in becoming the next Vitalik Buterin and engaging in “value extraction” rather than creating useful products and generating genuine value.

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Szilágyi criticized the industry for being impulsive and resembling a casino where people buy Lamborghinis when prices go up and suffer when they go down, without any meaningful contribution to humanity. Citing companies like SpaceX, he argued that if the industry cannot create truly useful products, it may be time to shut it down.

Szilágyi noted that while bitcoin (btc) is at least trying hard to become a safe haven asset, the rest of the industry is engaged in futile efforts.

ethereum is crashing

This skepticism comes at a turbulent time for ethereum. The cryptocurrency has seen a massive drop, falling 32% in a week, as the crypto market records its biggest drop this year. ethereum’s current price of $2,360, down 12.05% on the day, has pushed it below the lower Bollinger Band at $2,650, indicating that it may be oversold.

At the time of writing, ethereum was trading at $2,360, but early Monday morning it was trading at $2,200.

Over 278,000 traders were liquidated in the cryptocurrency market over the past 24 hours. bitcoin led the liquidations with $362 million, followed by ethereum with $345.7 million.

Total open interest in cryptocurrencies fell by 18.7% to $47 billion. The overall cryptocurrency market experienced a significant decline, with global market capitalization falling by 13.4% to $1.94 trillion.