Cardano (ADA), Cryptocurrency–Charles Hoskinson, a long-time cryptocurrency expert and founder of Cardano (ADA) has an interesting outlook on the marketplace for cryptocurrency.

While the CEO of IOHK doesn’t see a return to 2017’s bullish prices at any point in the near term, predicting it may take a decade or longer for Bitcoin and the like to eclipse their previous all-time highs, he does believe the market will be in much more mature position to handle elevated prices next time.

Speaking to CoinTelegraph at last week’s Crypto Finance Conference, Hoskinson, who also helped co-found Ethereum before parting ways with the project, remained optimistic on growth and adoption for the industry, even if market prices lag behind. While investors, particularly those who weathered the bear market of 2018, are hopeful for more positive news, Hoskinson cautions that it could take the better of a decade for major coins to reach the value they were trading at during the bull run to close 2017–a price movement which saw Bitcoin top $19,700 and the entire market capitalization for cryptocurrency approach $1 trillion.

For comparison, Hoskinson highlights the fallout among internet companies in the wake of the “dot.com” bubble. Despite seeing massively successful companies today such as Amazon and Google, a majority of the internet-based companies had to traverse a near decade of rebuilding value following their peak at the height of the bubble. Hoskinson believes Amazon, in particular, is a good approximation for what top currencies can expect in terms of growth over that time.

While prices will continue to fall behind what investors experience at the end of 2017, the industry, as a whole, will continue to mature and position itself for greater adoption and usability, including functioning in a manner that is far more realistic.

Hoskinson told Cointelegraph,

“It might take 11 years for us [the crypto industry] to recover back to where we were in 2017, but we will be a dramatically different ecosystem at that point. We’ll have millions, perhaps even billions of users. We will be in many consumer products, be easy to use, [even] grandma can use it. A lot of the hard stuff will have been figured out. Like if somebody dies, how do we get their private keys, how do we handle taxes, all of the regulation will be done.”

In addition to maturing through the current bear market, Hoskinsons finds attracting institutional investors and high capital firms paramount to the success of cryptocurrency. With the most recent development out of CBOE to withdraw their Bitcoin ETF, emphasis on approval for an exchange-traded fund is still at an all time high. The Winklevoss twins, who have become prominent figures in the crypto space, have spearheaded BTC ETF creation through their exchange Gemini, hoping to become the first U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved (SEC) provider of the fund.

Hoskinson believes that cryptocurrency could become an alternative route of investing for Wall Street, with most banks being on the lookout for the next best asset class to support. The cataclysmic fall in crypto prices is in part to blame for scaring away institutional clients, with the current lack of regulation being another barrier to entry. However, Hoskinson believes the maturing industry of crypto will provide to lucrative of an opportunity to pass up,

“Institutional investors are pretty picky. They’re very intelligent investors, but then they also require an ecosystem of sophisticated trading strategies and tools […] They need derivatives, they need options, they need to get a short sell, and if our markets can get these things, what will happen is that you’ll no longer see this massive volatility.”

Earlier in the week, EWN reported on a prediction by CNBC-regular Brian Kelly that Bitcoin will not see the creation of an ETF in 2019, but that overall the industry–and valuation–will experience positive growth.

Title image courtesy of BeattingBetting.co.uk