Etherum’s co-creator Vitalik Buterin, during a conversation with CNN, admitted that he is not surprised by the meltdown cryptocurrency witnessed in the last week. The 27-year-old might have faced a severe loss himself but stressed that the technology is hard to predict. 

Talking to CNN on Tuesday, Buterin asserted that cryptocurrencies are in a bubble. He said that “it’s notoriously hard to predict when bubbles will pop.”

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“It could have ended already. It could end months from now,” he added.

On Wednesday Ethereum saw a drop of more than 40%. Bitcoin fell to almost $30,000 before climbing back over $39,500. Ether too rebounded to around $2,700 on Thursday morning but the value is far less than its all-time high of $4,384.

Vitalik Buterin, who won the bronze medal in the International Olympiad in Informatics, 2012, founded the Bitcoin Magazine in the same year. He attained the crypto billionaire status and was around $1.1 billion worth before the virtual currency nosedived leaving his wallet amount at $870 million, CNN reports. 

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“We’ve had at least three of these big crypto bubbles so far. And often enough, the reason the bubbles end up stopping is that some event happens that just makes it clear that the technology isn’t there yet,” Buterin told CNN.

“It feels like crypto is close to ready for the mainstream in a way that it wasn’t even four years ago. Crypto isn’t just a toy anymore,” the Russian-Canadian programmer added.

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Cryptocurrency’s crash was largely attributed to Elon Musk’s announcement that Tesla would not accept Bitcoin anymore and People’s Bank of China’s restrictions against the virtual currency. 

Commenting on the influence of Elon Musk’s tweet on global markets Buterin said, “Elon Musk tweeting is something that the crypto space has only been introduced to for the first time literally last year and this year. I think it’s reasonable to expect a bit of craziness. But I do think that the markets will learn. Elon is not going to have this influence forever.”