There's a bubble in Crypto Land, but it's not Bitcoin (for now), and it's probably not any of the top 5-10 coins. The bubble exists within the rest of the alts, most of which offer very little to us.
Do any of the following pitches sound familiar?
"X Coin is free to use and instant."
"Y Coin is 1 penny, instant, and gives you a back massage."
"C Coin is free to use, instant, and can do 18 kajrillion transactions per day, while curing cancer."
Of course they do, and I'm sure you've seen ridiculous charts that look more like dance club fliers, touting the amazing and magical features of an alt coin few people have heard of.
Please understand: there is no such thing as "free energy or magical verification." Your visa card works because there are centralized entities facilitating and validating those transactions. Blockchain works because it’s peer 2 peer. There is no replacement or better tech available than what Bitcoin was all along.
Iota is not magic and neither is Ripple! A coin, or any form of exchange, has to have some layer of peer 2 peer , or some layer of centralization, or a combination of the two. If someone tells you that some new coin has much better tech than Bitcoin, ask them if it’s called “Magic Coin." Because, short of some sort of wizardry, the original Blockchain is the best we've got.
Now, having said that, Bitcoin hasn't done the best job of steering its Blockchain ship, and a strong argument can be made that Bitcoin Cash better represents what Bitcoin was supposed to look like AT THIS PARTICULAR MOMENT. Hopefully BTC figures things out. But that is a post (or a book) for a different day.
There are alts that will have interesting adaptions and uses - Ethereum, or one of the coins trying to be a better ETH, will stick around. There are some that focus on very specific niches that make sense. Some will hang around. But we don't need 5,000 coins, and we would be better off without the 4,900 that are marketing lies to the general public.
When you get past the top 100 coins for market cap, it gets scary just how little there is to most of these other coins. Some of them have a $300 website, a couple of kids nobody has ever heard of as devs, a list of "features" that sound like Christmas Land fantasies, and a rad logo.
And with most of these coins having almost no resources, and having such an uphill battle to acquire the kind of mining, exchange support, wallet support, etc. to become viable, they're penny stocks (at best), and ponzi's (at worst).
Blockchain was a once in a lifetime innovation to currency. It might have been the most important creation in the history of human exchange. Yet people act like something that will wipe the blockchain out is impending. That is laughable to me. Will there be improvements and new layers that help scale, adapt, and innovate? Absolutely! But there will be no magic coin, and there most certainly will be Blockchain. Satoshi had it right.
Trading alts has been extremely profitable, and it's hot right now. But it's a fad; it doesn't make sense for it not to be. I would never tell anyone not to trade alts - you might as well ride that wave until it crashes. But for holding and long term investment, buy the big boys, and buy the best of breed.
Thanks for reading, if anyone did!
-Marc Schwartz
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