Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have seen a drastic decline in exchange traded volume, transaction volume and overall interest in both traditional and social media. In this video, we discuss the decline in Bitcoin exchange volume, Bitcoin transaction volume and the increase in NVT ratio.
We also explore how media sites like Coindesk and Cointelegraph are starting to see their monthly visitors decrease as their Alexa ranks flatten and Cointelegraph sees a substantial 25 - 50% decline in views on some of its most popular price analysis articles.
Additionally, social media interest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is beginning to decline as well, as we see the /r/Bitcoin & /r/Cryptocurrency subreddit subscriber growth plummet. Both views and subscriber growth has been significantly stunted on YouTube as well almost across the board. There appears to be decreased interest in other social media as well, including Twitter.
In my opinion, this is evidence that most people only care about price, not the "technology." The sideways trading action in the market over the past month has led many people to become "bored" with only minor double digit movements (I get a chuckle out of that) and less people are interacting than before.
Will interest pick back up again? Perhaps once volatility enters the market again, especially if we see a breakout to the upside, but it appears many people were burned from the last crash and sold out or otherwise became disinterested. What are your thoughts on this macro trend?
I wouldnt worry too much about it, Bitcoin was so many times dead, it wont die now, probably it wont die ever!
We dont need those people who came in December to make a quick buck. They would have get burned anyway... overtrading, jumping from coin to coin, even if the whole market would have just been going up.
I think the big deal will be a crypto friendly regulation in the EU (because Switzerland is already taking all the blockchain companies from around the world) and with that other countries need to decide if they want a piece of the pie of this growing technology or not.
And with regulation, institutional money will enter the market. And if they do it with 1-2%, that still would be huge for crypto. And that is what I came for a year ago... to sell my bags to the institutional investors and maybe adopt the technology along the way...
I agree - the gamblers leaving the market is a rather welcome change even if it does reduce overall buzz and interest. Should be interesting to see what happens moving forward with regulations, especially for the much more sensitive area of ICOs.
Yeah I am curious about ICOs as well, but worst case scenario will be, that they have to register as a security. This would hit the market hard, but the good projects will register as a security and then can finally do what they want (paying rewards, a dividend and work to increase the value of their token with the value of their company).
If we are lucky, some future ICOs will have to register as crypto securities with different laws and already done ICOs will be treated as normal cryptos, if they have good intentions.
Love it, I was noticing the exact same thing over the last few weeks. Your views are going down more and more and the same goes for here on Steemit.
But it definitely seems like a decline in interest. Cryptocurrency was going viral in December and now that people haven't made money and there hasn't been huge increases in prices people seem to be uninterested.
I myself have even been trading less, although still following everything a lot. I do get the feeling that it's a phase though. There's been a lot of doubt, a lot of bad news and scandals, price action has been going down or just boring, and all the frenzy has died down.
Like last year there was an explosion in the altcoins over the summer, and then they all died down. I did sort of expect a bigger increase in price action at this point in 2018, but I still think at some point we'll have another big bump up and everyone will start talking about Bitcoin and cryptos again. Whether that's next month or 6 months from now, I have no idea, but my hunch is we won't finish 2018 at a $400 billion market cap.
It's definitely indicative, however, of the focus more on profit than investing in some amazing new technology because you believe in it or want to see it grow. I think you can see that also in how there's starting to be a ICO for everything. Within the next couple years we might literally reach that, and then maybe that's when the "bubble" will pop.
We love to compare crypto to the growth of the internet, but right now it's still difficult to tell if crypto is in the equivalent of 1999 for the internet or 1993.
I would have to say that I agree with you but there are a few things that I think are worth pointing out and I feel like they are all interconnected in a way. I will try to form these thoughts as best I can:
tl;dr: Most people are interested in what technology allows them to do, not its inner workings. Cryptocurrencies do not (at the moment) allow people to do things that would dramatically change or improve their lives and get them interested and engaged. Currencies aren't interesting to most people anyway.
Very well-written. I agree with you, but I bring up the whole price over tech deal because so many people think they're in it for the "tech" which is USUALLY a flat out lie not only to whoever they tell it to, but also to themselves. Many people like the ideologies of cryptocurrencies without realizing the work it will require to achieve those ideologies (or how many of them can never be achieved). Thank you for the comment.
Of course crypto is cleary in a buble (as you've said and continue to say) and even in short term the price isn't very stable; but the tech still has some value > 0
Things like Steemit are one of the reasons I haven't tottaly given up.
The fact that something without a inherit value can have pecived value can bring a lot of attention and interest to a topic wich would otherwise be ignored. And greed is the engine on whice all of these values are mesh together and thrown in as fuel;
Just like politic interests gave us things like space travel or atomic science,
Greed, speculation and in-it-for-the-tech guys can give us things like Steemit (and, of course, CryptoKitties)
Maybe I sort of glossed over this in my initial comment but thank you for the video. Really enjoyed it. I image the ideas I explored earlier as branches that are all connected to what you said and form a larger picture together (as pretentious as that sounds). The three points are indicative of the fact that price must have been a stronger factor in the recent growth and fall of interest because none of the tech changed really.
Might be flawed!
Point 1: You did not account for the lightning effect.
Lightning does transactions out of the blockchain. The single lightning start/close transaction will tend to have higher value. This could explain all your chart observations. I did not calculate the lightning effect on that figures, neither you. Thus it is an open question. Your high focus on Bitcoin could also have lead to a misperception in that sense. I think the whole analysis must be redone.Point 2: Media hype = bubble != fundamentals
Media hype is dangerous, pushes market cap to non justifiable levels. Less (or stable) media attention lets fundamentals to improve with less disturbance. Sure, even I having 80% portfolio into crypto do not read as many news as in december/January. But i am not jumping off. This attention analysis was interesting, but i do not agree with your conclusion (or follow up).
I just think that the general pattern you described would be predictable and not indicate a crypto recession. The fundamentals for 2018 also speak very much agains recession or stagnation on crypto.
That click bait got me.
Seriously though, I'd say the decline in interest is due to one thing only : greed. There's isn't much FOMO and opportunities to make quick money in the market right now, so people are just forgetting what happened in December and are moving on with their lives.
However people who are really interested in the space (tech, making products etc) are staying and consolidating the ecosystem as a whole. So it looks actually less scary to me, but rather healthier. I've lost so much time with fomo and deciding what to do with trading, when I could have just let things play out and focus on bringing value to cryptos as a whole.
You said you're not really bringing value yourself, but you're wrong! You're educating new investors coming to this market. This is a pretty big part of it since there is so many scams and noobs to get into them. So many people making huge investment mistakes based on fear. I've learned a lot from you in terms of investment and that's why I stay subscribed.
General thoughts:
Nothing can stay on the top page of a newspaper/reddit/whatever forever, and the people who were interested or brought on by the last news cycle are already here.
I myself had only been tangentially following along with bitcoin and the last year and a half completely blindsided me. Now it is part of my Reddit front page, youtube subscriptions, and general information feed.
The tech is also not to the point that it can be easily be used by the general public, thus keeping the price in control of the speculation of the future value of the market.
Also, I can only talk to my friends and family about crypto for so long before the conversation gets repetitve/boring without them doing more research on their own.
@cryptovestor - Good observation and commentary, thank you for the video. I appreciate all your work and content.
I think the amount of media noise is just a reflection of market price action. We are in a much-needed consolidation period and this applies to news headlines too. 30% daily volatility is not healthy and is not sustainable for any market. I feel we are on the right trajectory and before we see a new major bull run, there need to be some more advances on the technology R&D and implementation sides. As more and more people are focusing their time, effort and creative energy on the space, I expect that such advances will be made sooner rather than later. Therefore, I don't really expect a crypto nuclear winter unless there is another more substantial market crash or a series of such crashes on a monthly basis. It's better to have a cool off period, so people who are committed to doing meaningful work can keep their focus and make blockchain tech and cryptoassets better. I'm pretty confident that cryptoassets are establishing themselves as an institutional-grade asset class, so that's positive. Once there are some more positive news on progress being made on solving known existing issues with the technology, and hopefully we see new breakthroughs, momentum will start building up again. Then we'll probably see the same cycle of hype, greed, FOMO, and eventually fear repeat, accompanied by a commensurate amount of media noise.
Would you agree with this view on market outlook? What do you expect as the most likely scenario to play out this year?
Great video. I still think:
The bear market is here, and will last for a while,
This is consolidation / accumulation period, when some traders or investors are just accumulating their coins.
Most important indicators for now are not the prices: better looking into legislations, government moves, projects expansions, etc. Fundamentals are crucial this period. Strong projects will generate cash, atrract long term investors, and not only survive this cycle, but they will thrive. Meanwhile scams, and weak projects will go bust.
Towards summer time, I think we will see more green days, and possible bull run will start.
This period, of "cooling down" is crucially important for the crypto space, as this way the market can slowly mature.
It's your repeated requests in your youtube vids to come to steem @cryptovestor that actually got me over here!
When you say that most people are interested in price, that actually includes me wrt BTC etc. The tech is awesome but there's not enough pain in the west around banking to make the tech as amazing as it is, a necessity.
On the other hand I'm into steem for the tech. I'm learning that it's not a FB replacer but it's still an amazing platform. And it's got me interested enough to be diving into the cli and more.
The transparency and decentralisation of trust that the blockchain platforms bring though are great for a little competition for entrenched institutions and government. One of the issues we have with government is that even though there are parties involved, government is still a monopoly so competition from such technologies is a gift to the people.
@newsflash you've made my day. Thank you for your generous vote.
The calm before the storm.
2018 is where all the promises on the roadmap will be fulfilled for altcoins. Now it's only ramping up, because people lost interest after a huge bullrun, so i actually expect this to have low volatility.
Remember, that low volatility can be followed by a huge volatility spike. You can check the VIX index on 2018 01 08 which was very low volatility, afterwards had a huge spike, which was caused by stock prices plummeting up to -10%.
2017 was a big year for Bitcoin, but i believe 2018 will be a big year for Ethereum and altcoins. A lot of attention is on FIAT to altcoin direct conversion, which should decrease the dependence on Bitcoins volume/price.
I became a fan of your work since I found about you a couple of months ago on youtube, and it's great to see you on steemit.
I always enjoy your contrarian approach to things. Now, most chartists and analysts feel bulish on Bitcoin and crypto, but you presented these ideas and facts that to keep us grounded and talk about the possible threats ahead of cryptocurrencies in general.
As usual, great stuff man!
I love the fact that people are bored with it. Boredom means that cryptocurrencies won't be over-hyped (at least not in the near future). Less hype means less of a chance of a parabolic rise, which also reduces the chance of another catastrophic crash.
Plus, I'm OK with some sideways action and -- hopefully -- a slow uptrend.
This is just my opinion, of course...but again....I'd rather see less hype and slower growth over time. The same thing happens in the stock markets, where I work. More hype = unsustainable gains as people -- who only care about price -- get in. Scary losses cause the people without conviction to get out, and cooler heads remain.
We'll see.
My suggestion, start posting a bit more often. It takes days some time for a post and people forget very easily.
Only problem with that is to post regularly unless you have a team of people working for you means you need to start posting garbage low effort click bait news.
All this is great analysis BUT it is GOOD news. Low interest is not found at the top of the market. It is found at the bottom.
You seem to think this is a bad sign. NO
At bottoms people hate the asset. That's the time to buy.
I want to set up a schedule at some point, but want to maybe have some content "built up" first so that chances of me missing a day are reduced.
I assume that most people who have been/are willing to HODL for at least a few years must have a somewhat basic understanding of what the blockchain and cryptocurrencies are, because I can't imagine HODLing for any other reason.
Well, all the numbers you presented are correlated with price action, I believe. And spectacular action stirs up excitement, dull action does not. We are in a deceivingly dull phase. Spoiled from 5x gains, an almost 100% rallye since the dip makes many go "meh..".
That's quite ridiculous. Seasoned traders and investors must still be very happy with BTCs performance. However, those are not the noisy mainstream in social media.
I think that there is always interest in Cryptos. Every phase is attracting different people. Currently the silent ones are working on it. Yet I do sense more optimism (not on your channel, obviously :-D ) over the last days.
BTC is a big troll, personally I have not decided to vote for one direction yet. It fell below its strong lower support line and is hitting against it from below. Anything can happen next. This week will be interesting.
For me, the excitement has already returned!
The market has been walking sideways for a while now, and i think it will keep this way for a while.
Mostly because cryptocurrencies is out of the mainstream media, and there is not much dumb money entering the market.
But i think is probably a calm before the storm. There is a lot of things happening, in all corners of the cryptocurrency world. Regulations, bans, new coins releases, governments and banks embracing the idea of blockchains and cryptocoins...
Something is definetly cooking, but hell if i know in wich direction things will go.
And again, lets not forget the fact that a lot of "uninitiaded" people got burned from last december high to january fall, and they will probably stay away from cryptos for a while.
But as soon as a spark appears on the media, market will move again.
In the meantime, i hope the people that is behind the development of the good coins use the time to improve them.
good luck
Jesus man, I still can't tell if you are being sarcastic or serious in this video or not :0)
Yes the stats that you mentioned are all very worrying. Also, for me a very worrying stat is the market cap - which has hardly moved at all in the last days - so NO new money is coming into this zone - it is just being moved around from coin to coin (mostly to Bitcoin).
Many people have been badly burned, so of course they will really need a break from Crypto.
Also, many of the YouTubers have not been affected by this at all (not like the general public) and this disconnect between the YouTubers and the public is not helping.
If you got in a the right price point, these days have not been stressful, if you didn't, they have been hell for some - particularly because it has been such a roller coaster ride.
A lot of people now have no money, never mind spare cash lying around to invest in new coins that YouTubers are recommending etc.
At the end of the day, if we see some green in the market for a week or so, this will help a lot, not only because it will restore some market confidence, but also because the media will start reporting this and generating public interest again.
Oh, by the way, of course people are only interested in the price. The tech is absolutely NOT user friendly or practical at the moment. It is confusing even for tech savvy people (does anyone really enjoy using Ether Delta or waiting hours for a Ether transfer to be confirmed), and things like Nano Ledger or Trezor are way too expensive, and hacking is always a potential risk to lose all your money.
Totally agree. It is very scary that volume, adoption, and media attention are down. I am hoping if we get a little bit of bullish momentum, then it could pick up quickly again. Another good resource for checking sentiment and interest in the cryptocurrency market is: https://trends.google.com/trends/
I don't know if anybody will still read this but I have another explanation for the decline in views on coin telegraph and like wise websites.
It could also be because I've seen a big increase in Youtubers making a habit out of reading and talking about news articles on their channels.
This is honestly something that was not done so much back in December.
And well what I've found is that due to lack of time.. I have to pick my battles/sources etc. And listening to a few youtubers whose opinion you value like Ivan on Tech - Doug Polk - Datadash - David Hay and ofc yours to name a few.
I think a lot more people have started doing this instead of reading each article themselves. There's just too much information out there and even if you made it a dayjob you could probably not stay up to date with everything.
Now I'm not talking about the implications of people not doing their own research because we all know about that and how it doesn't happen haha I'm at fault for that sometimes as well.
The decline you highlight is probably among English speaking folks judging from your sources. It would be interesting to see stats from Asian and Romance speaking nations.
As far as the market everyone is hunkered down shopping waiting for the next surge. Meanwhile I am convinced the Wall Street players are using their bots to accumulate BTC, & the Alts they intend to make the next big winners.... Love your videos btw, bc you don't spend your time pumping coins as the Shill Tubers do. I think you, Carter Thomas, & David Hay are the most realistic folks on the market.
Oh, can you do a Steem for Dummies video? I am not grasping how it exactly works. Same with BAT.
I agree with you it has a lot to do with price action. The "get rich quick" crowd are not interested if BTC is not in a parabolic uptrend. At the same many investors and traders are probably waiting for a further correction to around 6K USD before reentering the market.
I cant predict the price, and I don't pretend I can, I certainly think it is entirely possible that Bitcoin does not go back above $20,000 for 3 years. I also think its entirely possible Bitcoin will hit $200,000 before the end of the year.
If OPEC announces tomorrow they are no longer accepting US$ for oil trades and will only accept Bitcoin then... well who knows. Like wise if the US government decides out of nowhere Bitcoin is only used for drugs and terrorists and makes it completely illegal tomorrow then once again, who knows, but this time in the other direction.
We can only wait and see.
Yeah, we need new money into cryptos, but I think once prices begin to rise, people will come back! It's human nature to have a short term memory and greed is a powerful thing.
Indeed, although it's worth noting that eventually bubbles do pop - meaning that eventually enough people get burned that they don't jump back in. I don't think we're there yet still - think we have another wave - and then not sure what happens next, but will probably reduce overall exposure to only my long-term holdings at that point.
yeah I think it's a good idea.. I'm also planning on reducing exposure and only keep a couple of cryptos longer term.
The 2013/14 hype cycle resulted in a great foundation of new businesses and technological developments that made the 2017 hype cycle a massive one (it also weeded out the bad infrastructure like MtGox). Certainly looking forward to the next wave of adoption, especially with all the money that is now being spent on building out infrastructure in this space. The next wave of hype will be in an environment where institutions can get involved and where the underlying technologies have mostly solved their scaling issues.
I appreciate your honest perspective in this video. I am personally stuck in the middle as I think we are seeing a reversion to the mean in the interest of the public which coincidentally is correlating heavily with the price. As price action remains dull, it will lead to stagnant interest. However, considering the amount of millenials interested in the space and the amount of capital on the sidelines given regulatory uncertainty, it may prove to be a pivotal point to get in when others are no longer interested.
The FOMO experienced late last year drove the interest and it may happen again but with more saavy investors that may have stronger hands. I know I am biased though as my interest is in the appreciation of capital opportunity. However, although I am not involved in the technology, I believe the technology will lead to increased adoption and those projects that will add economic value, will succeed in price as well.
Who knows for certain people have different reasons why they stopped or lost interest. One that I have heard is the on going government issues and not knowing how they are going to tax cryptos. The second one is that they are thinking 🤔 the government is going to shut it all down sooner or later. Until then people aren’t going to put to much into crypto or the technology until the government decides what it’s going to do. I for one thinks it a great opportunity to get in on something bigger then we probably know.
Many younger millennial's got involved toward the end of last year. Some bought in at the peaks. When LTC ETH and BTC went to the moon in December they thought now is the time to back up the truck. Guess what they got burned. Many were using margin, ouch. I got involved with crypto in 2015. Was rewarded nicely. I never dreamed of 4000% returns. I think the market got way ahead of itself, has corrected and will float around for awhile until things settle down somewhat. The weak hands have been cleaned out. This market in 2 years will not resemble today. We will look back and say "wow do you remember what it looked like in 2017"
I really like your video. I have recently seen many people on social media predicted a bull run in the next few days/weeks. You are the only one warning us that the trend is not really good. Your analysis completely makes sense. I strongly agree with you.
My only question is that when you analyzed the YouTube subscribers, you said that the number of daily new subscribers is decreasing. Well, since the total number of subscribers is still increasing, I think this is not a big concern. Maybe you should also look at the number of views of each video? The same as you looked at the number of views of the price analysis on cointelegraph. That probably makes more sense.
As usual, look forward to your next video!
Your points about interest are undoubtly true, however the correlation between interest and price is not really that clear.
In the second half of 2017 crypto prices where skyrocking and so was the interest in cryptocurrency. However one might argue that the rising price was driving the interest into the topic rather then the other way around, because the recent "crash" in february was not correlating with a suddenly dropping interest. Now after some weeks of limited price action we are seeing a decrease in interest, however we do not see a decrease in price. (At least this holds for bitcoin) If Bitcoin was to suddenly increase a lot in price again (or even decrease) this would very likely increase the interest again.
So in conclusion I am arguing that interest in cryptocurrency is not a good metric to "forecast" price evolution as the correlation between those two is rather unclear and judging from past events it seems as if price action is dictating interest rather more then the other way around.
@cryptovestor, while their needs to be some actual measure of adoption in the future, I'll tell you I believe this to be true across all media, Twitter and facebook isn't fucking news. Never hopefully will be, but certainly isn't now. People report on twitter beefs like they're news, but they are in fact smoke and mirrors bullshit mostly. Crypto and tech companies have a slightly different relationship to social media than celebrities, but I disagree with it being used as a metric of adoption.
Adoption can't and shouldn't be measured against social media dominance because while not entirely irrelevant, a company's success can and should be completely separate from their social media like rate. Seriously. These are two entirely separate domains, let's not conflate the two. Of course a bomb of a failure on twitter can and will effect your company in the real world, but these are not metrics that can stand in for one another.
I was interested to see the network usage go down, but again that is no surprise and doesn't tell the whole story. Of course batching is going to reduce that. A major crash is going to reduce that, since people won't want to buy, and hodlers won't want to sell. Sideways price movement or less aggressive price action at the very least explains a good portion of this. With less price action to drive fiat to crypto, crypto to crypto, crypto to fiat, and all kinds of network activity, the participants aren't as financially incentivized to be active.
Interesting video, although I must say I was talking over your metrics of adoption and largely thinking, "please let's not use that...or that...or that...or that...okay fine that's cool but misses this..." alot of that hahah.
Great vid.
Google trends is showing search volume back where it was around October.
Most people who got in probably only cared about price, but many will no doubt be intrigued and decide to hang around and learn more.
I was kind of surprised when the "Bitcoin is dead" reports weren't so prominent in January and February. Apparently they're still out there, but it seems like the media is a little more hesitant to print that kind of thing this time around. They're starting to get the idea that this tech is here to stay.
Have a good one
i sold most of my crypto on the way up and now still waiting for lower prices
How many interest on Tulips or Trains right now? Did people stop buying flowers or train traveling? No! People learn and looks like a decline of interest but that does not mean decline of adoption. Now I know about Bitcoin I simply stop searching for it...
Interest in crypto is for sure at a low point, let's just hope it picks back up stronger than ever before!
Lots of noobs got burnt buying at the 20 000 $ BTC top and since it's mostly millenials, it was probably their first such experience. Remember your first investment losses : it takes time to recover and fear kicks in for long.
Well, that intro certainly deserved an instant like, time to keep watching ^^
Your tone last vid reflects the general observable mood of the community. The alt party is over (for now) and we are poking bitcoin with a stick hoping it will do something interesting. On this chart I believe we are somewhere around capitulation.
You can bet I've felt it too, I'm human.
So cheer up. What matters now is quality. You were better than 99% of the other youtubers out there in keeping your head in the greed and delusion phase.
I think we are already at Return to the mean, which is a good and healthy development :)
I think you are reading the graph wrong.. Capitulation is already past whether you feel it or not :P
We are on our return to the moon.
I'd really like to believe that. Hope you're right. BTC chart looks pretty good right now. But still too many weak hands, I believe. The big boys are watching the same chart. We know what they want.
Would love to be 100% wrong here.
Declining interest is just like a crackhead sleeping off the post-binge insanity.
Oh and you think your channel is dead? mine never lived!!!
Another great video. Please post more often
I'm in it for the technology!
Now does the lack of volume necessarily indicate that crypto will produce a massive drop in price in the near future? Why can't it just continue sideways?
The weak hands have been scared off. Longer term investors remain as do people who are interested in what the tech has to offer. Such as you good people who are using Steemit! Another great informative video 👍
I agree with many of things You are pointing out. With exponential user growth there is always going to be people who are only are interested in prices, FUD, scams, template pages of ICO's were all of the buzz during past months.
Charles Hoskinson has a course on udemy "Bitcoin or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Crypto"
Last updated 10/2013 <- Haha.
And I very recently understood that I provide 0 value to cryptocurrency as a whole besides maybe just increasing awareness of it. I would assume some people will find themselves in a similar boat.
So much people know so many things in regards to cryptocurrency and could help adoption as well as awareness...
Don't get me wrong I love me some charts and Ichimoku clouds. But I realized that staring at them won't change the price.
This community is filled with amazing people, experts in multiple fields or areas from trading, digital marketing, social media, e-commerce and list goes on and on. And all that brain power is wasted staring at prices. Haha.
So I'm dabbling in creating something similar to Blockchain consulting gig. Where if I can help do anything meaningful towards implementation of technology. It becomes so much easier to stop worrying about price.
I feel like even if I help with something as simple as implementing NANO into a twitch stream and educating person on technology can be a lot more rewarding in a long run.
Here goes shameless plug: If You are interested in any way in participating, helping or knowing more about this project. Find me on the internet, haha.
but this is a good news for people who really want to use bitcoin. low fees
Thanks for the video. Once over 12k, back in business. It does appear many are holding their breath for the next salvo of news from the crypto world that will swing price. Good information in the video with the bonus of great sound effects!
I think as soon as we are nearing another ATH, every metric will increase again, but it is also sort of a chicken egg problem ;) I am here for the long run interested in both the tech, which is revolutionary, and the price :)