I wouldnt worry too much about it, Bitcoin was so many times dead, it wont die now, probably it wont die ever!
We dont need those people who came in December to make a quick buck. They would have get burned anyway... overtrading, jumping from coin to coin, even if the whole market would have just been going up.
I think the big deal will be a crypto friendly regulation in the EU (because Switzerland is already taking all the blockchain companies from around the world) and with that other countries need to decide if they want a piece of the pie of this growing technology or not.
And with regulation, institutional money will enter the market. And if they do it with 1-2%, that still would be huge for crypto. And that is what I came for a year ago... to sell my bags to the institutional investors and maybe adopt the technology along the way...
I agree - the gamblers leaving the market is a rather welcome change even if it does reduce overall buzz and interest. Should be interesting to see what happens moving forward with regulations, especially for the much more sensitive area of ICOs.
Yeah I am curious about ICOs as well, but worst case scenario will be, that they have to register as a security. This would hit the market hard, but the good projects will register as a security and then can finally do what they want (paying rewards, a dividend and work to increase the value of their token with the value of their company).
If we are lucky, some future ICOs will have to register as crypto securities with different laws and already done ICOs will be treated as normal cryptos, if they have good intentions.