The financial media are singing a funeral song for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general right now http://fortune.com/2017/06/15/bitcoin-ethereum-price-coinbase-down/. According to this Fortune article, the whole market is in a free fall and it brought down Coinbase in the process. (?) I don't know where they've been, but I'd say about a fifth of the time I go on Coinbase over the past year, it's not working properly. They've obviously got some technical kinks to work out, but I don't think the recent drop has anything to do with it.
And just to humor these people yelling that the sky is falling, I went to coinmarketcap and found that cryptos are holding fast. Total market cap sits near the psychological $100B resistance, Bitcoin's hovering around $2500 resistance, and Steem happens to be doing the same around $2.00. That doesn't look like a free fall to me.
This Time It's Different
Now I can hear in the back of my mind, the seasoned investors among us, telling us we're insane when we see a pattern developing and then don't heed the warning, because well, "this time it's different," but not really. Well, I think this time it really is different. For one thing, a newb like myself, a complete technical ignoramus, has jumped on the bandwagon with cryptocurrencies. We've got a couple social media platforms that have crypto underlying them. More and more vendors, from physical gold to new cars to electronics and even major political parties (well, not the major ones, but major ones) accept bitcoin and other cryptos https://99bitcoins.com/who-accepts-bitcoins-payment-companies-stores-take-bitcoins/. I think crypto is here to stay, and it's obvious that the video in my original Fortune link had a little bit of tongue-in-cheek value to it. The "against bitcoin" guy seemed to not really believe what he was saying, and he was smirking the whole time. It's almost as if they're trolling newbs into selling so they can buy back in at lower prices ;).
This is NOT Investment Advice
I never like to tell people what to do, and financial self-preservation dictates that I don't ever want to tell people what to do with their money. As I said above, I'm a newb to cryptos and ignorant to the technology underlying the whole shebang, so don't take this as investment advice to buy. In fact, the other day I was telling my friend who introduced me to cryptocurrencies that I wouldn't put any more of my money into the market at these prices. Again, not investment advice, it's just what I'm doing right now. For me it feels a little too good to be true with the gains I've seen on the tiny amount of money I've put into Steem and Bitcoin (which will limit my potential gains or losses respectively).
What this is, is an appeal to the rational part of my readers' brains. In my opinion, cryptocurrencies have arrived, and they'll keep arriving. Just some rough back of the envelope calculations will tell you the magnitude of what we're potentially going to see in the crypto market in the coming years. All you need to do is go look at the total amount of government fiat currency floating around the globe and imagine a certain proportion of that being taken over by cryptos, and then you get an idea of the exponential growth potential. I think we may be one economic catastrophe away from such an eventuality.
FUD
As with a lot of new technological innovations, there's always a lot of FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) surrounding cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Sometimes the FUD is right, and the naysayers are doing the world a favor. But in this case, I think they're wrong. I've always been a big proponent of decentralization in any kind of decision-making process. This is not just an ideological preference mind you. I see utility in decentralization. You look at tech companies out of Silicon Valley, with their relatively flat hierarchical structures and compare their growth to legacy top-down structured companies and you instantaneously see the financial benefits of this "new" style of corporate governance. Hell, The USA itself (in its original incarnation of course) was an experiment in relatively decentralized governance on the state level, and we all know how that turned out.
I don't see decentralized money as any different from the above examples. The flatter the hierarchy, the better the results for everyone, period. Cryptocurrency is no different. It will save the world from itself, and all of the corruptible power structures required to administer government fiat will drown in its wake. Mark my words.
Nice post. I haven't changed a thing I'm doing the same yesterday and today as a month ago! So far no panic for me, but tomorrow I don't know. That's what so great in the world of crypto, it's the wild west and it's free (still).
I hope they are wrong. I love what blockchain has to offer. I also fear those same amazing advancements are the reason they won't be accepted by the masses.