A huge drop in cryptocurrency prices has plunged traders into a panic in recent weeks as they desperately try to call the bottom of the market—though Elon Musk thinks he knows.

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The price of bitcoin has dropped to less than $20,000 per bitcoin, a psychological level bitcoin that was first breached in 2017 before crashing around 90%. Ethereum, its biggest rivals BNB
bnb
solana and cardano, as well as payments focused on XRP coins
XRP
and dogecoin have crashed along with the price of bitcoin, wiping $2 trillion out of the combined market.

Now, as major bitcoin and crypto players issue dire warnings about the future of cryptoa highly respected central banker has predicted that those who survive the cryptocurrency crash could become the Amazon-like tech giants of the future
AMZN
and eBay after the dot-com bust in the early 2000s that wiped out many of Silicon Valley’s biggest companies.

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MORE FROM FORBES‘People Are Scared’: Crypto Braces for New Fed Quake After $2 Trillion Bitcoin and Ethereum Price DropBy Billy Bambrough

“The analogy for me is the dot-com boom, when $5 trillion was wiped out,” Bank of England deputy governor Jon Cunliffe said at the Point Zero Forum in Zurich this week. Bloomberg. “A lot of companies left, but the technology didn’t go away. It came back 10 years later, and the ones that survived, Amazon and eBay, turned out to be the dominant players.”

bitcoins
BTC
creation over a decade ago, the world’s first blockchain-based scarce digital asset that some people compare to a digital version of gold, opened the floodgates for a wave of new cryptocurrencies, including ethereum and similar smart contract networks like BNB, solana and cardano, as well as payment-focused cryptocurrencies such as XRP and dogecoin.

Ethereum, BNB, solana, and cardano are fighting for dominance in the decentralized finance and decentralized application market, sometimes called web3. Ripple, currently engaged in a lengthy legal battle with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), developed XRP in an attempt to replace the old international finance settlement system.

The meme-based dogecoin, based on bitcoin and originally created as a “joke”, has been adopted by the likes of Tesla.
TSLA
billionaire Elon Musk and tech investor Mark Cuban as a means of payment.

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MORE FROM FORBES‘Epic Failure’: Ethereum Founder Issued Serious Bitcoin Price Prediction Warning Amid BNB, XRP, Solana, Cardano, and Dogecoin Price DropsBy Billy Bambrough

The value of almost all major cryptocurrencies has skyrocketed since the end of 2020, fueled by wild speculation and the huge influx of pandemic-era stimulus measures. However, the fact that the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates and reduce its bloated balance sheet sent the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies into a free fall.

“Whatever happens in the next few months with crypto assets, I expect crypto technology and finance to continue,” Cunliffe said, adding that cryptocurrencies have “the potential for huge efficiencies and changes in market structure.”

In contrast to Cunliffe’s relatively optimistic attitude, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has repeatedly said that he believes bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general “have no intrinsic value.”