Altcoins Talks - Cryptocurrency Forum
Learning & News => News related to Crypto => Topic started by: ZionRTZ on December 24, 2018, 07:58:33 PM
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The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2018 Year in Review (https://www.coindesk.com/category/2018-review)
The brutal bear market we faced this year was not only necessary, it’s beneficial for the long-term outlook of this rapidly growing industry. Yes, I know – you’ve heard this a million times already. But honestly, this bear market was the best thing that happened for our company.
I say this with humbleness, because we had great leadership and advisors to guide us along the way – this market has made our company more resilient than ever, forced us to be more innovative, and will give a huge sense of pride and accomplishment when we come out of it alive and striving.
Not a lot of blockchain-related companies, whether it be projects, funds, agencies or even miners can say the same. This is Darwinism at work. Regularly, I hear about investment groups having no more money to invest, crypto funds being down more than 80 percent since the beginning of the year and ICOs that were swimming in cash that are now broke and bootstrapping to stay alive.
2019’s theme, it seems, will be survival of the fittest.
Welcome Back to Reality
2018 was a wake-up call, a rude awakening from the dream-like bull run of 2017 where shady entities could raise $30 million with an idea, a white paper and a website.
Welcome to reality. Fiat still rules, investors want returns and the government can easily impose regulations to scare off investors. Unlike the financial world, however, there are no government bailouts. Ironically, also unlike the financial world, many people will go to prison — for frauds, scams, and even “crimes” defined by archaic laws that should not apply to this new asset class.
Decentralization, a word that we throw around ever so often now, is a very powerful – and dangerous – ideology. We have become so desensitized to the word and its potential implications for the future of the world that most people forget how this entire blockchain industry was incepted. A single, powerful white paper gave birth to this movement.
No one thought that it was going to be easy or quickly met with mainstream adoption. Decentralization is in essence, a proxy war against the government, the oppressive financial systems and irresponsible or greedy corporations.
And Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s creators, knew the dangers and risk that it could bestow upon his livelihood and family. Can you really blame him for remaining anonymous?
2017: More Harm than Good?
The truth is, 2017 was absolutely unwarranted. I’m not talking about Bitcoin, because if there is one thing that was warranted, its the Bitcoin bull run. It’s simply how the market cycle works.
Those in cryptocurrencies long enough know this very well. So-called “experts” on mainstream media can say what they want, but Bitcoin is not going anywhere. It is the most thoroughly tested network for security and resiliency, and believe it or not, adoption is growing faster than ever.
What was not warranted, however, was the ICO craze that we allowed to happen.
It has irreparably harmed the connotation that comes with the three letters “ICO.” People are getting creative now – PTOs, IEOs, MNOs and everything in between… just to distance themselves from the words “initial coin offering.” And we sat there watching it happen, knowing well that 90 percent of projects would utterly fail. But how can we say anything when projects were doing 5x, 10x, 25x, 50x, 100x and people are happy?
I won’t lie and say that I never had temptations to write a quick white paper and make a fancy website with trendy buzzwords to make a quick million. I also won’t lie and say that I didn’t lose a lot of money by holding. Everyone laughed and mocked litecoin creator Charlie Lee when he sold the top, but I wonder who’s the one sitting comfortably now.
The ICO craze just happened so fast and intense that regulators were not given the opportunity to even consider creating a new asset class for the modern world. Hopefully some good news will come out of Congressman Davidson’s plan to introduce legislation to re-classify digital assets.
Looking Forward into 2019
Price is almost irrelevant for altcoins right now. We can think of 2018 as the year those “AOL CDs” were “airdropped” into peoples mailboxes. Thousands of the world’s smartest cryptographers, engineers and developers are building the infrastructure needed for the decentralized web, which many call “web 3.0.”
If you’re trying to build a business, there’s a saying: “follow the money.” If you’re trying to be involved with the next world-transforming technology, I like to say “follow the nerds” (that’s a compliment, not an insult).
2019 will definitely be an interesting year, with a lot at stake. Billions of dollars are still being poured into blockchain R&D and projects, it’s not just about Bitcoin anymore. The race is on for mainstream adoption. Which protocol will be the next IPv4, HTTP, SMTP? Who will build the first MySpace? Which network will blow our minds with fiber optic-like transfer speeds? Who’s novel idea will one day dethrone Reddit, as it did to Digg?
There doesn’t have to be a single standard protocol or platform – that’s not my point. My point is, the infrastructure is now barely being laid out and tested – some obviously outperforming others.
We are deviating from being a speculative market at such a fast rate that, quite honestly, caught me off-guard. Retail investors are actually performing due diligence before investing now! What a lovely sight to see.
For the past six months, we’ve received tens of hundreds, maybe thousands, of emails and requests from “projects” with no working product, no experience in the blockchain and had no reason to create a token for their idea. On average, we take on less than 20 percent of clients seeking help after performing due diligence, and invested in less than 1 percent of those seeking funding.
We were blessed enough to be able to almost ‘choose’ which projects we want to work with, thanks to all the word-of-mouth referrals from friends, partners, advisors and old-school networking. We welcomed the bear market with open arms because we were able to help projects achieve their goals. And through that process, we learned a lot.
Closing Thoughts
Blockchain projects, obviously, can not be evaluated in the same way as traditional companies.
Bitcoin started off as a grassroots movement, with a small group of cryptographers. This core principle has not changed, and we stress that to all our clients. The single most important factor for a project’s survivability is its community. Without community, there is no network. Without a network, there is no value.
I will argue that 2018 was the most important year thus far in decentralization. Yes, many people lost a lot of money. Yes, there were scams and money-grabs. Yes, we could have done a better job at attempting to protect consumers and ultimately the industry. But the industry is stronger and growing faster than ever, despite what the prices say.
For those in it for the long run, and for those that want to build an empire, this year’s bear market was just a prime opportunity to really focus on building. If you’re thinking “it’s too late for me,” you are completely wrong. You’re not seeing the big picture. We’re still on AOL dial-up internet. The canvas is 99.9 percent still untouched. Draw something with pencils until paintbrushes are available. You don’t have to hold an ICO to draw – to add value and ideas to this toddler-stage industry.
2019 will be the year where we truly find out which teams are capable, which tech is scalable and flexible, and which ‘novel’ ideas that we see popping up every day are applicable.
SOURCE: https://www.coindesk.com/nevermind-the-bears-2018-was-the-rude-awakening-crypto-needed
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This is the period for the investors to learn harsh reality that it is not the one way traffic, market may give jerks which makes them strong to be firmly stand in the odd times.
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In principle, everything is correct, those who entered the market with the bulls realized that not everything and not always smooth, especially in the cryptocurrency market, so that such a fall might have been necessary so that many could open their eyes!
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Yes ,2018 was a rude awakening in the history of Cryptocurrency after the bull run of 2017.
The market has been on a correction line ever since we entered 2018 as expected even though it surpassed our expectations.
Hopefully, 2019 will be all about bull run.
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Kudos to you and I really like your way of breaking every thing down to the level of why everyone should see 2018 as a year to embrace and the year for long term investment opportunity which I think is far more ok but some surfer it but need to make it up if they stick to the technology and believe it can bounce .
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Really interesting article... bull run in 2017 made everyone crazy and without thinking about the real purpose of blockchain but only profits.
I agree with the fact than 2019 will be the year where good project will have a big growth while poor ones will die.
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One of the best article I have read so far. I really love the closing thoughts especially the "build an empire" and "survival of the fittest" for next year.
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Kudos to you and I really like your way of breaking every thing down to the level of why everyone should see 2018 as a year to embrace and the year for long term investment opportunity which I think is far more ok but some surfer it but need to make it up if they stick to the technology and believe it can bounce .
Appreciate the complement but credit should go the author of the article and not to me. I only shared it in this forum as I think it will also be helpful. I am glad it is.
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this year has accounted many losses in crypto, the year has just be bad but we still hoping for something good,something greater, 2019 would be hopefully good.
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I have been watching the market for a long time and I can tell you that bears were specially brought to this market in order to earn and cool the industry.
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Really interesting article... bull run in 2017 made everyone crazy and without thinking about the real purpose of blockchain but only profits.
I agree with the fact than 2019 will be the year where good project will have a big growth while poor ones will die.
These are sings, of a maturing market. More and more people find about it, and learn to distinguish good and bad projects. For sure, it is a good thing.
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Really interesting article... bull run in 2017 made everyone crazy and without thinking about the real purpose of blockchain but only profits.
I agree with the fact than 2019 will be the year where good project will have a big growth while poor ones will die.
These are sings, of a maturing market. More and more people find about it, and learn to distinguish good and bad projects. For sure, it is a good thing.
I can sense it is not just a sing but a reality. Have you seen the growth of eth these past few days after new year? Probably one of the worth it incoming. Add to that the fork they will commence next week. Probably a huge pump due to massive buying of eth to acquire their new coins splitting.
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I think that 2019 will be year of truth for crypto, where poor project will fail (finally!) and only good ones will survive... I think that will happen what happened years ago to DotCom bubble, where only big giants will survive but will really become giants, so there will be good opportunity of investment as well!
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I really like the closing thought of the author. Yes, 2018 was really a wake up call especially to those who were new to the market and were already dreaming of "lambo's". It was also a great chance for those who were building their portfolio and those who were trying to start.
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People who believe that there should always be an exceptionally bullish market are uneducated people.
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Last year was like an eye opener for us that market never remain same like in 2017. 2017 was a bullish year for cryptocurrencies and 2018 was a bearish period but 2018 teach us lot of bitter lesson and that would be very helpful in 2019. I believe this year is again the period of investment to get good profit in coming months. I hope soon market will shift its gear so be prepare and grab the opportunities of buying high potential coins at cheap price before its too late.
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The year itself was rather strange and multilateral view of the fact that some are talking about its practicality, and some of his loss.
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If this Agency was so important-the market would have reacted to this news and began to move very much, but we did not notice it.
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Bears were vital to the crypto industry so that it could continue to exist, you understand that already.
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Whatever we are, we have passed 2018, as the worst year for crypto (many people say about this). And this year? This is just beginning and the market shows its decreasing and still dumping. Can this ebar market continue in 2019? Who knows? I think that it may continue, but it will end by half of this year. Hopefully.
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I think that reading Analytics in 2019 is quite a thankless task. How many times have they been wrong in 2018. Do you still believe them?
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Here each time going on the shape I can see how very different are the thoughts of citizens and investors in a big hand. Now no investor makes conclusions on the basis of someone's Analytics.
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End of 2017 was a gift for those who had suvere amount of tokens and traded them on time. Now it is just back to normal ups & downs. But mostly downs. Bears pls go away
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Last year was like an eye opener for us that market never remain same like in 2017. 2017 was a bullish year for cryptocurrencies and 2018 was a bearish period but 2018 teach us lot of bitter lesson and that would be very helpful in 2019. I believe this year is again the period of investment to get good profit in coming months. I hope soon market will shift its gear so be prepare and grab the opportunities of buying high potential coins at cheap price before its too late.
And not it is 2019 already and the market is showing good signs of being bullish or should I say that the bearish market already ended
and the bullish market is now beginning to show movements. Cryptocurrencies are really unpredictable and anything might happen at
any point of time but for those people who believe in the technology, they don't care whatever market situation it is.