Cryptocurrency investors woke up to a bloodbath today, the likely cause was a rash of mass hysteria brought on by the fear of the possible (likely) upcoming fork in Bitcoin. A few days ago everyone was happy with the state of segwit and we were seeing some fantastic gains in market share and then Bitmain and a few bitcoin whales decided they wanted LARGER file sizes instead and threw a massive wrench into the plans. They are launching Bitcoin Cash, which is just going to be a way for them to make a ton of money off of uneducated investors and BTC uncertainty.
Basically a very small percentage of miners have come out and said they don't agree with the other 95% and want to fork BTC and create Bitcoin cash, which solves the file size problem by increasing the block size. Basically only a small handful of people will go along with this because it does not benefit anyone but the big fish who create it and I am so sick of bitcoin crashing the market every time they fork. Not because the fork actually causes any problems with bitcoin but because the fact that so many people DON'T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS that it causes these massive drops for no reason at all other than people, who don't know what they're investing in, get scared of these words and pull out of bitcoin. All this red today literally means nothing. It seems like everyday a new video comes out telling people the end is nigh or something is to the moon.
Cryptocurrency as a whole is extremely volatile because the values of these companies don't yet reflect any sort of profits or business models, instead their prices are set by the currency in circulation divided by their market cap and the value of the currency is generally tied to their 24hr trade volume as well as any sort of news that comes out about the project. Since this is all speculation the prices go up and down like mood swings. Some days people feel good about crypto and everything lights up green, then other days one whale could have woke up, sold a few hundred thousand shares of BTC and literally caused the whole market to go down. In the stocks and financial markets of wall street there are regulations that specifically prevent the kind of volatility we have in our coin markets, this is both good and bad. It is good in the sense there is still a ton of money to be made if you can figure out where to invest and when, but it is bad in the sense that it is very vulnerable to manipulation and the newest people coming to the cryptoworld are being taken advantage of, and as a community that cares we need to educate people and call out these manipulators and help reduce the volatility in the markets by quieting these sensationalists, ALL WHO WANT TO CAUSE PANIC AND INSTABILITY in the markets so that they alone can profit. Anybody who blasts coins like CHAINCOIN and DOGE either knows that they are giving bad advice or they shouldn't be giving advice at all and we need to get rid of all this misinformation being spread. Some of the top coins in the world HAVE NO DEVELOPMENT TEAM ANYMORE, its insane.
We need to collectively calm down and organize where we get our information from, Approach investing like you would making an expensive purchase and research research research. You wouldn't buy a house without knowing it was perfect, so why would you invest into a currency that you don't understand. You can't just take someones word for it because they made a video and get a lot of views, that doesn't make someone educated or intelligent or honest. If you're interested in cryptocurrency you are already ahead of 99% of the world so count yourself lucky for that, something about you has given you the foresight to see the benefit of this technology before most of the world. There is no rush, you have time to make your fortune, be patient and kind and let it happen naturally.
I have posted about the state of the cryptocurrency community lately and this just further shows how the once bright eyed and bushy tailed newcomers of the last year or two have gone from sincere and community driven, to selfish and personally motivated people that regularly use their own supporters as a stepping stool to elevate themselves and leave everyone else behind.
You see we all start out with great intentions, we all believe that we would want to help the world if we could, only we can't yet because we don't have the means. But when you finally start to feel like you made it your ego steps in and you may start to feel that you deserve more than everyone else, you still want to help but you want just a little bigger piece because after all you're the one who is creating the content. But the value isn't in your content, it is in the application of your content in the lives of the people who read it, so I call all content creators and Steemitans to fight back against these market manipulators and call them out. Flag the pages of the sensationalists and upvote the content of the sincere, don't just curate content, curate character.
For more crypto and finance related news please follow, upvote, and resteem @steeleminer.
Great post, you just put in words all my actual thoughts. I just woke up today and saw so many red numbers, searched around and did not find any reasonable reason my action was just to buy a bit more with a smile in my face. I trust this technology and I am in for the long run. HOLD HOLD HOLD. upvoted and follow!
Thank you that means a lot to me. I think it's hard for people to realize that even a single person can affect the cryptocurrency market and combine that with their hope of getting rich (quick) and its a spawning ground for hustlers who can play the crowd. As a community I think we can help change this with our votes. We need to stop supporting the sensationalists and give our votes to the people who help the community.
Great post, I resteem this content. The market today is in the red with this hard fork on the way with Bitcoin cash.
Thank you! Your support means a lot to me, and I liked your content as well so have now followed you!
Flipside: 7% drop in BTC price. That's not bad in the grand scheme and could be "profit-taking."
I am fairly certain the largest BTC whale in existence holds around 1% of the total bitcoin supply in circulation. This means that even if he cashed all of it out thats less than 1% of $40 Billion. Yes it would be numerically large but in terms of impact on BTC as a whole would be negligible. This 7% drop is likely not profit taking because the people who would be taking the profit are smart enough to understand that the price of BTC will likely spike after the adoption becomes understood so in all likelihood the smart money is buying BTC now not cashing out.
Good explanation. Thanks.
And you're probably right.
This is a great article @steelminer. It's crazy to see this all play out.
You're right. The manipulators are strong and ambitious right now. I'm a big fan of Jesse Livermore who was one of the original high power stock operators. This reminds me a lot of his old stories of when the stock market was in it's infancy. People would use all kinds of tricks to move the market and game the system.
Anyway, to me this feels like some of the big boys are afraid they missed the train. They want to keep the price low for a little while longer so they can accumulate large positions.
Thanks for you insight. Nice article. I will keep following your posts.
Cheers.