‘Crypto is a damn casino for dum-dums,’ Ethereum developer says

Péter Szilágyi, a core developer at the Ethereum Foundation, recently expressed some disillusionment towards the crypto industry on his X account.

Amid an ongoing Ethereum (ETH) sell-off on Monday, Szilágyi questioned the crypto sector’s focus, 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.

Szilágyi criticized the industry for being impulsive and resembling a casino where people buy Lamborghinis when prices rise and suffer when prices fall, without any significant contribution to humanity. Citing companies like SpaceX, he argued that if the industry cannot create genuinely useful products, it might be time to shut it down. 

Szilágyi noted that while Bitcoin (BTC) at least strives to become a safe asset, the rest of the industry engages in pointless endeavors.

Ethereum is tanking

This skepticism comes at a turbulent time for Ethereum. The crypto has seen a huge decline, collapsing 32% in a week, as the crypto market records its largest dip this year. Ethereum’s current price of $2,360, down by 12.05% for the day, has pushed it below the lower Bollinger Band at $2,650, indicating it may be oversold.

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

Over 278,000 traders were liquidated in the crypto market over the past 24 hours. Bitcoin led liquidations at $362 million, followed by Ethereum at $345.7 million.

Total crypto open interest dropped by 18.7% to $47 billion. The broader cryptocurrency market experienced a significant downturn, with global market cap falling by 13.4% to $1.94 trillion.