Cryptocurrency fans say price crash is a “bump in the road”

The future of cryptocurrencies will entail greater regulation, more involvement by large institutions, lower volatility and greater integration with traditional assets.

That’s according to panelists at the Bloomberg Crypto Summit held in London on Friday. The summit convened at the end of the bloodiest year yet for the nascent crypto market, in which more than $700 billion has been lost, to assess the damage and look ahead to 2019.

While no one forecast an immediate rebound in crypto prices — Bitcoin has lost about 80 percent of its value this year — they cast the current downturn as more like growing pains than rigor mortis. In fact two areas of growth for the industry will come from low-volatility tokens known as stable coins and so-called security tokens, digital contracts that represent ownership of assets such as real estate or stocks.

“I don’t regard this as an existential crisis, I just regard it as a bump in the road and institutional investors have had plenty of…