Merry Christmas Steemit!
Crypto currencies as a whole have had an amazing run in 2017 with Bitcoin reigning supreme. The blockchain based crypto currency started the year (Jan 2017) trading around $800. Since that time Bitcoin has hit highs of nearly $20,000 outperforming even the best of traditional stocks and any commodity.
I don't need to post any of the charts because you've most likely already seen them than its apparent you've been living under a rock the past 6 months. Traditionally speaking when we look to invest our money we turn to a few places being stocks, bonds and other traditional investments (Full disclosure I am not here to bash traditional investment methods in order to say crypto is king, but for now its certainly leading the pack, growth wise.) After the financial crash of 2008 a vast amount of people became aware of the shady activity taking place within traditional "regulated" markets. Soon after a new technology called "Bitcoin" was created in which few knew(and still to this day most don't know) that this technology would change the world.
The year 2009 was a whirlwind of financial instability. The banking system was on its knees and major American companies were in dire need of assistance just to stay afloat. The Dow Jones lost nearly 50% of its value wiping out hundreds of billions in equity rapidly. Unprecedented loss of wealth lead to a spike in unemployment as well as inflation(which is the main reason bitcoin is the future). I was 12 at the time, no money invested in any markets, had poor parents so they didn't own stocks, but my grandparents ranted and raved about how devastated they were by the crash. Soon my parents complained how difficult it was to find good work and make good money. As a 12 year old all I could do was sit back and watch all this unfold. News anchors got on the nightly news and spoke about how the US Dollar was quickly dropping in value.
After weeks of coverage on the crash and hearing everyone and their mother talking about "how bad the economy was" I wondered to myself, "How can so many people be effected by the dollar losing value and stocks going down?" It just didn't make sense to me at the time. I am completely unaware of bitcoin at this time.
Fast forward 5 years to 2014 and I am a senior in high school. As every teenager I dreamed of graduating and going to college and then live a comfortable life worry free with my nice paying job. I wondered what job I was going to try to get after college in 2018 and how much "money" I could make. Soon after my graduation of high school I began researching into the federal reserve, banking system and causes of the 2008 economic disaster. What I found shocked me. We all accept US dollars as money, which is fine, but the US dollar is no longer backed by gold. In reality it has no intrinsic value besides the paper and ink used to print the bills. Additionally the federal reserve(which is a privately owned entity, please do your own research into this topic)prints money at cost(ink and paper) and then sells it back to the US government plus interest, this is why taxes are so necessary. A majority of tax revenues are used to cover the interest on the debt($20,000,000,000,000) and as the US government continues to run deficits and borrow more money the amount needed to cover that interest will grow as well. Bankrupting the system as we know it today. Speeding all of this up is the fact that the Federal Reserve can print dollars indefinitely, depreciating the currency roughly 2% at this point.
2 more years had gone by and I had landed a well paying sales job. Although I knew this information and knew it could and should come crashing down at some point I decided as opposed to losing 2% of my buying power leaving my cash in a savings account I would invest in the stock market to beat inflation and grow wealth for the future. After investing in traditional equities and seeing reasonable returns(74% 2016) I decided to do more research into investing and other ways to invest my money. I kept reading about Bitcoin, the price at the time was around $800. Most of the headlines told of how it was a scheme and would never work and is only used for illegal activity. Despite all this, the blockchain technology that Bitcoin operates off of really sparked and interest in my mind. It was at this point I decided to liquidate all of my stocks at the time and shift into the crypto currency space. I loved how that before bitcoin there was no way to exchange wealth online without employing a third party such as Visa, PayPal etc and that this new technology changed everything. I loved the fact that I knew how many BTC were in circulation and would ever be in circulation where as with traditional USD we have no idea. I loved how Bitcoin transactions were instant and cheap(compared to traditional bank transfers of 3-5 days with a 5% fee). This gave Bitcoin value to me. As more people use USD more will be printed, this is not the case with BTC. As more of the global community begins using Bitcoin the value of BTC will only rise and as more people begin using it in day to day transactions the price will only rise. This gave even more value in my mind. "What if Amazon, FaceBook etc began accepting payments with this?" it really all began to click in my head.
A little over a year later that initial investment has seen massive appreciation as more and more people become aware of crypto currencies. I think 2018 will be a great year in crypto and I think the next 10 years will blow all of our minds. What do you think the biggest growth we will see in 2018? I see Litecoin as possibly being able to reach $600 and Bitcoin reaching $30,000 by year end, what're your thoughts? Please share your story on how you first heard about and became involved with cryptos and how they've compared with your traditional investments.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
BillyMan
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