He clarified it later
To be clear, I never said that there is no room for growth in the crypto ecosystem. I said there is no room for *1000x price increases*. A 1000x price increase from today means $200T in crypto, or ~an entire 70% of todays global wealth being in crypto.
What I *actually* said is that, because large portions of the population have already heard of crypto, further growth of crypto in any sense must come from *depth* (ie. actual usage), and not bringing in more attention.
I believe he is actually realistic with his own, because when we are talking about the 70% of the global population being in crypto, we might as well just assume that everyone will be getting in. We do not need to also remember that just very few percentage of the global population is holding the largest percentage of the global wealth. Just a thought!
I would not say anything is impossible, but all I can say is that whatever it would be in years to come; I believe it is best we just leave it to time to decide. Still, there is absolutely no one who can actually see the future to be able to know what is realistic or not.
Zhao could have thought there is room and Vitalik thinking it is unrealistic to expect anything serious to 1000folds in the future and the days are long gone, but in the real sense, no one knows what the future holds and that is reality. Back in the days, who could have thought bitcoin would even get to this stage. I remembered old threads in which a lot of old member back then though $15 was overpriced. I guess that purely explains itself.