 A tough start of the week for Ethereum in particular, which sunk to $170, but then on Thursday it shot up 20% over $200. However, the number 2 crypto is still down around 9% on its weekly chart and over 35% on the month. We asked some interesting people some interesting questions about what happened with Ethereum recently, and also to look into their crypto-crystal balls and see what the future holds. Also this week, Vitalik thinks 1,000% growth is for dreamers, i6 sucks at crypto, extortion in India, and blockchain goes to college. Ladies and gentlemen, here is your weekly hotellers digest. The ICO boom might now be an ICO bust. This August, startups raised a mere $326 million, the lowest since May 2017, compared to the seemingly improbable $3 billion average from January to March. ICOs on the Ethereum blockchain were widely credited for the precipitous rise of Ether's price in 2017. Now, the finger is being pointed at them for the crash, as projects cut their losses from the bear market by cashing out. Last week, Ethereum went into free fall, falling 15% under $200. As mentioned before, the ICO sell-off was the primary reason, but what were the others? Fudmeisters like Noriel Rubini were out in force, but we also spoke to some crypto insiders for a more literate and balanced view. Forbes columnist Naim Aslan, CryptoScam.com's Tony Vaze, and Mathias Riesel, co-founder and CEO at Barum Capital AG. A lot of ICOs that have raised money during 2017, maybe they raised $20-30 million, but in reality in 2018, this $20-30 million is nowhere close to even half of this. So now, when they raised $30 million and now in reality only have $10 million to spend on building the minimum viable product, now people are panicking. These ICOs that were so successful in 2017 during this boom are now selling their Ether positions. Do we even need Ether? People look for solutions on how the Ethereum network would potentially work without an Ether. But what we need is people to start questioning Ethereum, and then on the other hand, we have NEO, we have Stellar, who finally start really exploring other ways of conducting an ICO. This constant hype of Ether is kind of like pressing this price down and really creating volatility. There is absolutely no definitive answer from the SEC that Ethereum is not a security. It can still be ruled a security. So I think that realization had something to do with it, with the fact that people no longer had as much confidence in Ethereum. Also people are starting to gain more confidence in EOS, and Ethereum is having some serious competition. The good thing is that right now with this pain has helped to eliminate all the scammers out of the equation. People are finding it extremely, extremely difficult to raise funds, and only good funds would be able to raise money when this bull market would come back. You look at the OTC transactions, you speak to any of the OTC desks, they are piling up on Ethereum and Bitcoin. So it's your retail investors which are getting shaken out, speculators being shaken out. If you think whales are selling it, you need a reality check. Speculators beware, our crypto lord and savior has spoken. There shall be no more 1000% growth in the blockchain space. The blockchain space is getting to the point where there is a kind of ceiling inside. If you talk to the average educated person at this point, they probably have heard of blockchains at least once. And so there isn't an opportunity for yet another 1000x growth in anything in the space anymore. Vitalik believes growth and innovation are about to plateau, and we won't see late 2017 growth again. But speak ye not of FUD, Noble Buterin is here merely to explain the time for hype is no more, and finally the time for real applications of real economic activity is here. Following his comments, Buterin clarified on Twitter that there is still room for growth, just not by 1000%. Crypto kiddies will still be more expensive than actual cats, be not afraid children. Crypto can be only used for scams, money laundering and terrorism, it's just a fact. Wrong. Actually, all of the Mr. and Mrs. FUDs out there, the crypto and blockchain industry is not innately illicit and should not be feared. It can be used both for good or ill, just like most technological innovations. This is according to a study from the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. A congressional hearing concluded that cryptocurrency is a poor form of money for jihadists and cold hard cash is still king. Al Qaeda and ISIS, for example, have not had success using crypto. The study mentions that the first terrorism funding campaign, Jehozona, conducted in 2016 in the Gaza Strip, was publicly visible on a blockchain. The funders and campaign was managed by a group of jihadists who aimed to raise $2,500 per fighter with an option to pay in Bitcoin. The group reportedly raised the impressive sum of, wait for it, a little over $500 in Bitcoin. A Syrian militant group, Mohammed Tactical, is another example as they tried to raise funds on Twitter, but the campaign was not as successful as Jehozona. It only raised about $100 worth of Bitcoin. Losers, complete and utter losers. The study points out that terrorists may not be extremely savvy in cybersecurity. Even thus, avoiding hacks and price volatility is a little beyond that. Even for terrorists, crypto is a fringe activity. After police in India made arrests related to BitConnect, it appears that nefarious crypto activities still plague the South Asian country. This time, it's extortion. Naleen Kottadia, a government official, was jailed for 10 days in connection with a $1.3 million Bitcoin extortion case. Allegedly, businessman Salish Bhatt was kidnapped, taken to a farm, and forced to send 200 Bitcoin to former business partner, Kareed Palladeya. Bhatt also alleged Kottadia pressured him to pay the ransom. After an Indian court found Kottadia to be a proclaimed defender and a warrant was issued, Kottadia mysteriously was nowhere to be seen. Then in July, a senior opposition party member requested a probe into a mega Bitcoin scam, estimated at about $723 million. The crime apparently involves other government leaders, including a cover-up for money laundering and extortion. Kottadia also reportedly ordered a transfer of the equivalent of about $35,000 to a witness. Kottadia claimed to win into hiding for fear of his life, given that he has substantial, compromising info on both powerful politicians and business people. Not sure what classes to take at university? Have you considered blockchain? Blockchain classes are increasingly popular with students at top universities, including Cornell, Wharton, and UC Berkeley. Coinbase, and curiously, surveyed 675 universities, and they found 9% had already taken a class, and 26% of students wanted to take a class in blockchain. The classes on offer include blockchain and crypto economics, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and the distributed ledger technology. The class at Cornell was so popular that 100 students competed for just 25 places. We spoke to a few people involved with the courses themselves. Stephen Boutoff, a student at Cornell, and Kevin Werbach, a professor at Wharton. For one thing, we had to implement some smart contracts on Ethereum. And they were typically very open-ended assignments. So you could kind of like, if you had an idea, you could implement it and kind of run with it. And then at the end of the class, there was a large-scale project. So people would kind of focus in on one area. And I think that that's actually one of the most interesting things about blockchain right now is it's so young that even people without like doing significant amount of research into the space can come up with very interesting, very novel ideas that actually are very useful. They can see that there is increasingly, there's opportunity that's extremely broad. So certainly anyone who's interested in financial services, which is a strong component of our student base at the place like Wharton, can see that whether you're talking about new fintech startup innovators or you're talking about any of the established institutional players, investment banks and so forth, everyone's looking at blockchain. Hodlers and no-coiners, what is in your crypto-crystal ball? Let us know in the comments below. And as always, don't forget to like, subscribe and hodl. Cointelegraph, like, subscribe and hodl.