When I first started to get into Bitcoin back in 2012 I was mesmerized by the ideology behind the technology. Decentralisation and individuality were always things that fascinated me and Bitcoin seemed like a project that could materialize this idea.
Entering the market I also noticed other coins that based their concept on Bitcoin. They weren’t novel in a sense but rather a little different than the original Bitcoin. The idea was kept the same but each one offered a new perk that Bitcoin didn’t offer.
Another thing I noticed was that the overall cryptocurrency market was very much like the Fiat market. Ofcourse, this was a disappointment for me since I expected that other people would see the brilliance of the code and rather invest in the technology long term. This was not the case. As time went on, I soon realized that the crypto market wasn’t all that different from the normal one. After all, apes gonna ape.
This realisation alone should have made every single cryptocurrency investor understand that profit comes first and then everything else follows. Money talks and there is little one can do to control one self when the going gets tough. They say that the market reveals the true character of a person. This is extremely true. The crypto market is a mirror to what is really going in the head of the crowd.
There are no individuals in the crypto markets that think about liberty, freedom, independence and all that romantic staff. There are people who care first and foremost about profit. The herd mentality takes over as the green and red candles start dancing in the charts. Desire takes over and shit starts hitting the fan.
The crypto market specifically is characterized by what I call “The Trailing Noob”. A few whales move money around and then the average investor (noob) starts investing as well. Price goes up, more investors get in while the whale takes profits leaving the noob bag-holding. This cycle moves from Bitcoin to fiat to alts in all given directions. This cycle though became more complicated with this year’s crypto boom market.
When I see “Bitcoin Fork” I read “Bitcoin Bait”. The magic money generating machine should make everyone skeptical. Thing is the masses are not individuals or skeptical. They are as stupid as they can get. When money moves into Bitcoin for “double rewards” then the masses follow. They already tasted the rewards once. The whales know this. Hysteria builds up making Bitcoin look unstoppable, reaching crazy highs. As the alts bleed out from the weak hands the whales are accumulating slowly right behind them, without even making the moves noticeable. Right before everyone is expecting for the BTC rally to continue they pull off. Right after we see massive cash outs to either Fiat or other alts. The average weak hand is left with a bleeding Bitcoin and the only way to buy again into the market is to buy expensive alts that whales will yet again drop on their asses. Again, this already happened once although instead of Hard Forks and Dimon we had Mt. Gox and the Chinese soap opera. Ironically, always timed perfectly.
By the way, I should note here that I wrote this post yesterday before the bleeding begun but vanished from Steemit’s database for some reason. I am re-writing it again today. I warned about the inevitable demise of BTC in an earlier post noting that Bitcoin will eventually become obsolete and with this post I am letting you know that we are about to see an exchange of BTC/alt wealth that will dwarf what happened on April-May. Bitcoin will be taken over by a long bear market and some alt coins will make insane gains. The BTC bear market will also butcher many other coins along the way, no doubt. The whale money will not end up in fiat. We might lose 50 billion or so but the remaining 120 billion market cap will slowly start accumulating over alts.
Ofcourse this cycle will repeat once more somewhere in the future like it happened some years ago. We are at the peak of the current BTC cycle right now. Act wisely. Remember how happy you were a few months ago to buy the cheap alts? Well, that’s exactly the spirit. Remember, the blockchain is not yet to the point where it affects us ideologically — to the point we all become long term Bitcoin or even alt investors. We preach it but we don't really believe it. The market shows actions, not words like that bullshit you hear from Bitcoin evangelists in symposiums, seminars and youtube videos. If people were really believers we wouldn't be seeing so much insane volatility in the billions. Don't be a trailing noob, slowly bleeding out while whales pick up your blood drop by drop. Either invest and forget or try to walk on their side. Any other strategy will bleed you dry.
I agree bitcoin is on the top of a cycle, that is certain to me. I plan on selling all my bitcoin for ether after the fork and Im sure many are planning similar strategies. I do not however believe in bitcoins demise. I believe that it can go as low 3k at the lowest but it will always have its place in the market, or at least for a very long time and certainly while crypto's go through mainstream adoption. Great post btw! I would like to hear more of your thought's ;)
when i say demise i mean "doge tier". it is going to be there but it will be as hard to trade as a massive diamond.
You don't think it will ever scale?
Bitcoin will scale but off chain and its not going to work very well until many channels open up. I predict about 2 years if/when lightening network is really ready to jump into for the average Bitcoiner. Meanwhile top Alts are going to eat Bitcoin's lunch. Dash is just months away from Evolution release with massive on chain scalability. ETH will eat Bitcoins lunch too. ETH has major transactional volume now - over 550,000 transactions per day at sub penny fees and 13 sec. block times with total privacy Zknarks + off chain scaling about to ramp up with Raiden release.
Until then, other coins will be eons ahead in terms of scaling.
Precisely. There's so much development going on in ETH. ETH will have about 2% inflation per year with validators (stakers) earning around 7% a year off the gas fees. ETH as a currency, ETH as a smart contracts platform -ETH Eco-system will be huge. EOS will do up to 1 million transactions per second when it launches in June next year. Then there is going to be blockchains that loop them together forming an Internet of Blockchains with many extra features added. The future will be incredible in this space.
Claiming to understand everyone in the market so you can make a broad statement that there is no one is a bit much for me. Have you considered some think long term and their ideals about liberty, freedom, and independence are directly driven by their understanding of long-term profit? By that, I mean those ideals and profit taking go hand in hand. The blockchain (unlike other systems) is open for scrutiny. Yes, we have a big problem with centralized exchanges which are not transparent, but I do think more and more projects are working to address that. Maybe whales will stay on the centralized exchanges and keep pushing things around, in which case that's a good argument that many whales don't care about the long term benefits, but I don't know that we can easily speak for everyone like you're doing here.
Yes, whales push things around, but claiming "We preach it but we don't really believe it." is speaking for quite a lot of people in the space. Maybe it's like, just your opinion, man. :)
Do you think this post was accurate in 2013? Do you think it's accurate now (why or why not)?
The nice thing is, your views are now on the blockchain. If BTC goes to $10k or more in the next few months, you can write another post saying, "Oops, I guess I was wrong about that BTC bear market call."
There might be some. ok. I might have overstepped there but even those people think about profit first. I don't claim to understand everyone but the general sentiment of the market shows that this is rather the rule rather than the exception.
I won't make another post if it goes 10 in a couple of months. Not that kind of guy. I always reference my posts to keep track.
and yes i still agree with the article. i mentioned it in the last post if you remember, i just think those numbers are long term.
Life-long Libertarian checking in.
Fast. Cheap. Borderless. Bail out free. Bail in free. ben shalom bernanke free. janet yellen free. goldman sachs free. anonymous. voluntary. government free. Violence free. comex manipulation free. decentralized. inflation free. eternally capped at 21,000,000. uncounterfeitable. no storage or security overhead. It is perfect in every way. Bitcoin. Use it. Live it. Love it. It is superior to fiat in every way. Get out of the dollar while you still can.
Very few people truly understand basic economics, but those who do are Bitcoiners all the way! Even I dabble in trading now and again but I know Bitcoin will be $1,000,000 each. That's just based on the US national debt alone!
Unfortunate you see it in this light.
I've been following bitcoin for years and only recently have I actually started investing.
I've gone through the many phases of deciding what my strategy was, on one side i'm a libertarian that whole hardheadedly believes in technology as a means of freedom from government. One the other side I wana get rich and surf the world. The reality is you can't make an assumption as grand as "all people in btc are hypebeasts".
Bitcoin and blockchain are a disruption event that hasn't been seen since the inception of the internet. Do you believe in the power of the internet or is it as the wall street wolves said in 99' "it's just a bubble". Everything is a bubble until it's not.
Most of the crypto investors/people with interest that I've met both at home and overseas have been mostly libertarians in one way or another. Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong. What's true is that blockchain is here to stay and the original crypto which is essentially viewed as "the father of blockchain" probably wont go anywhere either. When you invest in bitcoin, you invest in blockchain; one way or another.
Never said all. The vast majority are. They might hold some BTC on the side but the majority is trading/investing.
Blockchain is the future. No doubt. Heck we will see another BTC pump in the next year or two in the 6 figures I believe. Right now though the market will ease off. Anyways. We will be here. Steemit posts remain forever in the blockchain.
can't argue with that, gotta ride the roller coaster to have fun!
I agree that the hype is way too large in some instances and causing many returns investors to join for quick returns. But if blockchain is the future, as I believe it is, in an increasingly decentralized economy, then the value of the BitCoin will continue to rise longterm. It still remains the "gateway drug" for crypto-investors as most people buy BitCoin as their first cryptocurrency before getting into the full power of the system through altcoins.
If Blockchain is the future then Bitcoin will be obsolete. If the blockchain doesn't work then all other alts will die off and BTC will remain as an increasing store of wealth.
"There are no individuals in the crypto markets that think about liberty, freedom, independence and all that romantic staff" .... you know all the 'individuals' to make such a sweeping judgement?
Compare the very new crypto space to the alternative central bank driven traditional criminal economy and its a huge step in the right direction. Of course not perfect but it will take generational change for people to stop pursuing materialism as the ultimate ideology, we've had it drilled into us for centuries at least have a little patience for people to change.
I usually like your posts but this has a lot of bitterness for someone who alleges they are a bitcoin veteran.
I don't need to. I need to see tens of billions vanish in a matter of hours and assume that the majority of stakeholders have other things in mind. Actions speak louder than words.
never said otherwise. Bitcoin is far superior. nobody argued otherwise
very true again. i said that we are not "there" yet.
This post was just a warning because I have been through this before.
Fair retort , I'm not going to cross swords with someone who I'm sure I have a lot of common ground with, we're all on the same side afterall. 🙏🏻
In other words, don’t be the sheep 😀
Haha, took the words from my mouth :-) Having a background in trading the writing is on the wall with this move. I have been buying up alts over the past week on the cheap and expect a large BTC pullback upon the HF.
About this statement:
Does Steemit have a database? The Steem blockchain is the database for Steemit. The articles may not reach the blockchain if steemit.com is under attack from hackers.
Have you used other sites to check if your article is in the "database"?
I invite you to try Busy.org and join the test of the Busy beta. More info on the Discord channel here.
yeah. maybe not a database. don't know how steemit works anymore with all these attacks taking place.
I think good ALTs are going to take over too. I been gradually buying up ALTs now. Yet no one knows how high Bitcoin will go before it gets overtaken by Blockchain 2.0 projects. They are superior in a respects. Bitcoin only came first but does not mean it will finish first. Its still smart to leave some money in Bitcoin. Although I expect a big rotation into ALTs shortly.
The ideology of an utopia you seek doesn't exist my friend.
People gotta live, people gotta pay the bills, the ideology of a perfect world is left for people like Bill Gates who has more money then the rest of the world. There's 1 Bill Gate out of billions of people, and buddy you and I aren't him lol.
Tell that ideal to the guy making minimum wage, all he hears about blockchain is "potential" to make an extra buck and perhaps not all the significance behind it. Maybe that's because he's not as technology savvy or perhaps even something more basic as the guy's gotta pay bills to fundamentally "survive".
The average man here in the US in becoming the president is non-existent, to be your local city's council you gotta be rich to began with. Try doing the math of how much people spend to be a council man in your local city and you'll realize the American dream is only for the top earners. The American dream remains a dream for more people then you and I would like to believe in their entire lifetime.
I noticed many of the same things a few years ago. 2013/2014 was a big eye opener for me. I thought the majority of people into crypto were into liberty and finally ridding themselves of the bankers. I realized after awhile that was only a small percentage of those into crypto. The majority were into the profit potential and I saw a lot of people lose interest when Bitcoin dropped from 1000+ to under 300.
The good news is an active minority can move things in the right direction. The people gambling aren't the ones innovating.
Thanks for the article it was a good read.
Same thing will happen shortly. Many later adopters will sell at a loss and wait until the next bull run.