A few months ago Toshi Times covered a story where Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group, said that Bitcoin was in a bubble, but blockchain is not. He says that even though the most popular cryptocurrencies were inflated, the underlying technology holds an immense promise and potential for the future. Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, said to Blomberg that these boom and bust cycles are great for cryptocurrencies and blockchain since it draws attention to the technology. Ethereum is the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, and you can read all about Ethereum on Toshi Times.

In the interview, Lubin says that this past year’s surge in value was a bubble and the ecosystem is stronger because of it even as prices tumble. The blockchain is in an early phase and could be compared to the internet in the 1990s, but the development is happening much faster than it did back then. Therefore we do not just see one bubble, as we did during the dot-com, but we have seen six so far.

“We’ve seen six big bubbles, each more epic than the previous one, and each bubble is astonishing when they’re happening, but when you look back they look like pimples on a chart,” Lubin said during an interview on Bloomberg Television.

He also argues that traders are driving the prices and the volatility but even though the prices move up and down, the development of core infrastructure is not slowing down. After leaving Ethereum, Lubin founded ConsenSys, which helps startups build on top of the Ethereum network. Lubin said ConsenSys has 1,100 employees who build infrastructure for the Ethereum ecosystem and focus on products, consulting for enterprises, governments and central banks, and capital market activity. He said it cost under $100 million to run ConsenSys last year and the figure will be higher this year.

Ethereum went over $1,000 in February which was partly due to startups built their project on top of the network and sold tokens through crowd sales known as initial coin offerings (ICOs). However, some of the projects are cashing out – contributing to the ether slump. Ether has fallen by as much as 27% this week alone, the most significant two-day drop since February. The price was as low as $251.

Lubin foresees an excellent future for Ethereum and cryptocurrencies where Ethereum will be significant, among hundreds of other protocols in a co-existing crypto world.

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