Following his departure from Fantom and the entire crypto space which was marked by a 6% decline in the total DeFi market cap, Andre Cronje in a blog post noted that the crypto space was ‘dead’ and in need of more regulation.
Is crypto dead?
In his post, Cronje decried how the crypto market had been plagued with concepts like wealth, entitlement, enrichment, and ego which have ‘strangled’ concepts upon which the space was primarily built. He further noted,
“I have long been vocal on my disdain of crypto culture, and my love for crypto ethos. Reading that might sound weird, but crypto ethos is concept like self-sovereign rights, self-custody, self-empowerment. Crypto culture is concepts like wealth, entitlement, enrichment, and ego. Crypto culture has strangled crypto ethos”
Andre went on to state that as the space continued to grow, users became further entrenched in values opposite of those upon which the technology was created.
“We are entering a new age, the current iteration will become the badlands, where unknown wallets lurk in the shadows, we will see the rise of a new blockchain economy, not one driven by greed, but instead driven by trust, not trustlessness.”
He primarily emphasized the need for regulation in the crypto sector.
Regulators running amok
In this context, a look at recent events in India and Russia indicates the increased regulatory actions in the crypto space as suggested by Cronje.
Over the last few weeks, following the implementation of the new crypto tax regime, cryptocurrency trading volumes on Indian exchanges have been on a steady decline. Furthermore, exchanges have halted crypto payments in light of the regulatory uncertainty in the region.
Similarly, in Russia, the Ministry of Finance proposed draft legislation to provide for a rigorous regulatory framework for blockchain and crypto-related. Also, on 18 April the Association of Banks of Russia (ADB) called for lawmakers to criminalize self-custody crypto wallets in order to forestall the issues associated with the recovery and seizure of cryptocurrencies from debtors and criminals.
But did Fantom react to Cronje?
24 hours after Andre’s post, Fantom (FTM) recorded a 5.68% spike in price. The trading volume over the same window period however declined by 14.50%.
Similarly, At the time of this press, a review of the Money Flow Index (MFI) revealed increased distribution as the MFI rested at the 11-mark, deep in the oversold region. This was, however, indicative of a bearish run. It appeared that investors are exiting their positions and taking profits.
The blog post didn’t hint at Cronje’s come back, but investors who consider themselves mystique can certainly take a few lessons for their FTM trading strategy.