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Executives from the cryptocurrency industry said that the recent crash in the broader digital assets market should help get rid of “bad actors” in the space.

The cryptocurrency market saw billions of dollars of value wiped out in only a few weeks, following a sell-off in stocks, and a collapse of stablecoin TerraUSD and its sister token Luna. 

“We’re in a bear market. And I think that’s good. It’s good, because it’s going to clear the people who were there for the bad reasons,” Bertrand Perez, CEO of the Web3 Foundation, told CNBC at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“It’s good also, because all those projects are gone. So the legit ones will be able to focus only on developing on building and forget about the valuation of the token because everyone is down.”

“During the ... bull markets when everything is green, no one thinks about building, everyone thinks about making a fortune, which is ... the wrong mindset,” he added.

Mihailo Bjelic, co-founder of blockchain company Polygon, echoed the sentiment, calling the cryptocurrency sell-off “necessary.”

″[The] market, in my personal opinion, became maybe a little bit irrational, or maybe a little reckless to a certain extent. And when the times like that come, [a] correction is normally needed, and at the end of the day [is] healthy,” Bjelic said.

The sell-off in major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether was followed by a broader plunge in stock markets, in particular the technology sector. The terraUSD stablecoin losing its $1 peg made it worse for cryptos.

Additionally, institutional investors’ involvement cryptocurrency market, was a key driver of the latest sell-off, according to Brett Harrison, president of cryptocurrency exchange FTX U.S.

“If people are looking for assets to sell, crypto is going to be on the list,” Harrison told CNBC.

Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, urged investors to consider a longer-term view.

“Bitcoin about two years ago right now, bitcoin was about $8,000. Now it’s at 30,000. So yes, there’s been a crash and a trillion dollars came off. But when you zoom out a little bit further and look at the long term trends, I think you see that crypto is here to stay,” Garlinghouse told CNBC.