Off late, there has been a major pull back across the whole crypto market and Ethereum is no exception. As is always the case, there are probably a multitude of reasons for this however let’s look at a couple of key reasons which stand out:

Regulatory Landscape: The regulatory landscape is evolving across the globe for the entire crypto space. The SEC is looking at ICOs as securities, similar to a company’s stock offering. This implies that the strict regulation that goes with IPOs will also apply to ICOs. More than 80 crypto currency firms were subpoenaed by the SEC in the recent past. Japan and South Korea have cracked down on a number of crypto exchanges and are developing regulations. India doesn’t consider cryptos legal tender and has filed 100,000 tax cases against alleged perpetrators. The examples go on. Unfortunately, there is a lot of “dirty” money floating around and according to me, what you are seeing now is a combination of dirty money booking its profits in wake of the impending crackdown and a smaller segment of traders/investors cutting their losses because of continuously crashing prices.
Platform Limitations: Ethereum might be the current “go-to” platform for smart contracts and decentralized applications because of its market positioning however, bluntly put, the platform is no where near ready for prime time. GASP. Its true unfortunately. Right from scaling issues to unprecedented data growth, the platform has been struggling. Anyone remember what happened with the crypto kitties application that was deployed in Q4 2017? It became so popular so fast that it clogged the whole Ethereum blockchain. Transactions were taking extremely long, sometimes even days to commit. Basically, it was a mess. That was just 1 app. The creator of Ethereum (Vitalik) is a smart guy and he has already proposed a number of solutions to address these challenges (e.g. Sharding, Casper etc.) but these are not implementation ready at this point.
Will the price recover? Again, IMHO it will. I cannot say when but I feel bullish on the possibility of it happening especially given that I have a long term view on certain cryptocurrencies; these price movements don’t really bother me all that much. Here’s a couple of reasons why I think Ethereum has a good chance of increasing in value and price over time:

Platform & Market Positioning: Ethereum’s smart contract platform is currently the most pervasive in the space -- a majority of ICOs are built on it. The ETH token is one of the few tokens you can use to buy other cryptos. Ethereum has solid market positioning and my bet is that it has enough of a runway to address its challenges and not be beaten out by competing smart contract blockchains in development e.g. EOS, Cardano etc. In other words, I believe Ethereum has a place in the smart contract space even if that position is not #1.

The Team: Vitalik is a super star in the crypto world. Over the years, one of the things I have learnt is that smart money bets on a solid founder and team. I believe he has the skills and know-how to step up to meet the current challenges facing Ethereum. Additionally, the team has a good track record of progress -- that’s not a small thing in the crypto world :)

Institutional Money: Last but certainly not least, it is my hypothesis that a large amount of institutional capital is currently on the sidelines waiting to enter the crypto market. If you look closely the signs are everywhere however that cannot happen until regulations are in place. Once it does though… the flood gates will definitely open. And you know what they say…. A rising tide raises all ships … I say Ethereum will be one of those ships ;)