Binance CEO: Recent crypto drop part of ‘normal market fluctuations’

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said Thursday that the recent drop in the cryptocurrency market is part of “normal market fluctuations” and that there is no reason to believe that the market won’t see higher highs at some point in the future.

Speaking to CNBC, Zhao added that the recent market action in crypto is “quite normal” and not unlike what investors experience in the stock market.

“There are a lot of people trading on the volatility of crypto but that is the same as stock markets. Some people trade and some people build,” he said.

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) was down another nearly 5% in early trading Thursday, falling to around $30.17K. The crypto has touched a 52-week low below $26K, compared to a high of nearly $69K reached late last year.

Meanwhile, Ethereum (ETH-USD) has come off a high of $4,865.94 last year to trade at $1,837.41 early Thursday — a decline of more than 60%.

The Binance CEO argued that while the market has suffered a decline lately, crypto innovators will continue to push ahead with new projects.

“We still do the same things [when crypto falls]. We work with regulators to push clear regulations in all parts of the world. And we push adoption, we do new use cases,” he said.

Zhao said the goal of most developers in the crypto space was to create new “killer apps,” like NFTs and DeFi.

On DeFi specifically, the Binance CEO contended that the “model works,” although specific situations will fluctuate with the market. That said, Zhao acknowledged that regulation will be “really tricky” for the space, due to its decentralized nature.

Thursday saw additional trouble in the crypto market, as Solana (SOL-USD) dropped almost 10% after an outage the previous day.