There is a lot of debate permeating the internet about whether cryptocurrency is dead. The price of Bitcoin has fallen 65% from it’s 2017 highs and we’ve seen a total cryptocurrency market cap fall from $1 trillion to $260 billion.

Former diehard Hodlers have returned to full-time gaming and our grandparents have stopped asking us about this “Bitcoin” thing. But is cryptocurrency really dead?

Here are 5 reasons why it’s not:

1.Cryptocurrency prices rose exponentially and declined slowly. Usually bubbles form and burst in the opposite direction — steady increases over a long period of time and a sudden crash. This happened in infamous crashes such as the 1987 Black Monday, Dot Com crash and 2008 Global Financial Crisis. The most recent cryptocurrency trend has been a staggered decline, about three times longer than its rise. A slow decline is more indicative of healthy correction rather than an absolute crash.

2. The blockchain and smart contract technology remains intact. There was no Bitcoin security breach, no superseding technology, nor any threat that renders Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies useless. The supporting phenomenon that popularised cryptocurrencies in the first place is better than ever and represents an alternative to the legacy financial systems (and other systems) that we have in place today.

3. We now have over 24M blockchain wallet users worldwide. This is a 15% increase since the end of last year, which has occurred even during the declines of the last few months. This also represents an almost 100% year-on-year increase of wallet users worldwide.

4. More businesses than ever are accepting cryptocurrency as payment for goods and services. This doesn’t just include major companies such as PayPal and Expedia, it also includes an influx smaller businesses as well (see list of businesses accepting crypto payments here). Cryptocurrencies are also the preferred method of payment for internet based freelancers which are becoming an increasingly important economic engine of the digitised 21st century.

5. We’ve been here before. For those who have been involved in crypto for longer than a year have experienced at least one major fall in the price of Bitcoin. This is not our first rodeo and it is certainly not our most significant crash either.

A more convincing argument to why crypto is alive and well, is that we still don’t know who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Until we hear it from the horses mouth, there is no reason to assume that cryptocurrency is going away any time soon.

Whoever Satoshi is (I personally think it was Nick Szabo, see reasons why here), he created an amazing gift and has left it for humanity. More important than arguing over whether cryptocurrency is dead, is arguing over who is going to play Satoshi Nakamoto in the blockbuster Bitcoin movie!