Dear Readers,
Anyone following the cryptocurrency market over the past few months has seen the spectacular rise and pretty dramatic fall of the value of an Ether. The currency rose from the $100 range to the $400 range from May to June, and from June to July we’ve seen it drop back down to the $200 range. The question is, why is this happening now?
Here are four reasons for the drop:
1. Post-ICO startups are cashing out to reduce risk
These projects have costs. And, for now, those costs are in fiat currency.
While you can buy some things with Ether and Bitcoin, most of the expenses of running an organization and the expenses of the people who work in those organizations still happen in boring old dollars, euros, and yen.
Let’s assume for the moment that the start-up projects are not scams or pump and dump schemes (I’ll get those a bit later). Still, these projects have to get actual money to pay for stuff and, thanks to the blockchain, we can see it all happening. So when EOS decides to deleverage some of its ETH risks, everyone knows about it.
And when Tezos, which I predicted would raise $250 million (it was just a little bit under that), completes a record-setting crowd sale, it will do what anyone does: reduce risk.
Scale this out to every project and assume for a moment that every ICO is going to take 10-20 percent of its ETH “off the table” and put it in fiat to avoid the “crash that everyone knew was coming, but didn’t know when ” and now you have $50-100 million worth of sell orders coming in at the same time. That’s a decent percentage of the market moving in one direction at once. And that’s just the ICOs from June.
But wait, as they say, there’s more.
2. And they’re cashing out to buy technical talent
Remember why all of these projects are raising money. For the most part, it’s to find talent to help build the vision.
The challenge? Blockchain technical talent is in ridiculously short supply. Combine that with very high demand and you have market forces that my nine-year-old can explain.
There’s a war for development talent, and it’s being fought at the cash register. The fiat cash register.
It is why one article recently proclaimed “Why Brave’s $35 Million ICO May Not Be Enough for a High-Tech Hiring Spree”
3. New investors have come in — with shorter time frames
I’ll throw one other possibility out there. The advent of new types of investors in the space.
Over the past few months, we’ve seen an explosion in the value of the crypto-market. As a result, any money manager worth his/her salt wants to get “in on the action.” Everyone wants to be Olaf.
It’s not surprising that Forbes recently profiled 15 New Hedge Funds that Want In On 84,000% Returns. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The more “professional” traders are thrilled with month/month returns that ETH and the others are yielding, so naturally, they are going to take profits as well. They don’t have the HODL (Hold on For Dear Life) perspective that many of the O.G.’s (Original Gangsters) in the space have.
4. “Pump and dump” start-ups could be taking a toll
Among all of the serious blockchain startups conducting ICOs, there are a number of others that are either unprepared for real company-building or that never intended to build a legitimate company in the first place. In these cases, the ETH pumped into an ICO is likely to be cashed out quickly. With the current lack of regulation in the ICO space, it’s too easy for malicious players to abuse the system and for undermotivated or unprepared startups to simply give up and cash out.
Behold The Solution
Benefits:
- Earn Gas (Similar to a Masternode feature)
- Supports Multiple Coding languages
- Government/ Corporate backing
- Support higher traffic (No crashes like ETH)
- Smart Contracts
NEO is an open source cryptocurrency being developed by Onchain, a company based in Shanghai. One of only a few cryptocurrencies that support smart contracts, many refer to NEO as the “Chinese Ethereum” (kinda sounds like an exotic drug). NEO started development in 2014, a year before Ethereum was announced in 2015.
NEO has solid fundamentals. Its technology is significantly better than Ethereum’s and like Ethereum, it enjoys strong corporate and government support. NEO is strikingly absent from Western markets while adoption in China is strong. Although Onchain seems to be reluctant to pursue Western markets at the moment, its upcoming rebranding event will probably change that. As of right now, there is a lack of English marketing materials for NEO.
Along the recent rebranding to NEO, they are taking the opportunity to update the blockchain network. The Antshares network 1.x has limited smart contract functionality, so they will update it to the NEO network 2.0 with a full smart contract system. The whole update process will be done by August 8th as a celebration of their 1-year ICO anniversary.
The following upgrades for NEO network 2.0:
We will first need to upgrade all non-consensus nodes. Exchanges, blockchain explorers, and other services are required to upgrade to NEO 2.0 before August 8th.
Regular users can, but are not required to, update to the new client before August 8th.
On the day of August 8th, we will upgrade all consensus nodes to NEO 2.0.
After all consensus nodes are updated, users who have not updated to the new client will be prompted to do so when starting the old Antshares 1.x client.
It is the same blockchain, so you can copy the "Chain" folder from the old AntSharesCore into the new NEO 2.0 client folder to speed up the blockchain syncing.
If you have your NEO/ANS, NeoGas/ANC in an exchange, then you don't need to do anything.
All your assets are safe and secure during the whole update process.
Other Promosing Platforms: STRAT & EOS & LISK
Thank you.
Follow me for more crypto tips!
Great post @crypto-oracle
I'm heavily invested into Neo as well... Love this technology and interesting way they offer dividends to their coin holders. Big things to come!
Cheers!
I love the concept of the GAS it really encourages for HODLing!
I hate that I agree with you. It's been rough for Ether lately. Should have waited prior to buying it.
Yeah, a lot of people never saw it coming! In the long run though you will make money just HODL
Great post, NEO will be where my next investment will be in, including STEEM. Looking at LBRY, Iconomi, and Stratis too.
All such amazing projects! I myself have all those in my portfolio :)
Great, hope you can share in the future why you invested on those cryptos, looking forward on reading it. I have followed you Sir.
I will make sure I make a post about it in the near future! I have followed you as well :) Cheers!
Thanks Man, will be waiting for the posts on that. Cheers :)
I gave you an Upvote & a Resteem.
NEO is a great one, but don't forget about EOS - it's under $2 to buy tokens right now.
I agree and I'm very hopefully about NEO, strat & EOS. I would also add Lisk to this group as well, it plans on releasing a new platform that will allow smart contracts to be created in javascript in their own side chain off their main blockchian. They plan on having this ready for release by q4 2017.
I totally agree about LISK! Huge future for all 4 platforms. Maybe i should buy some LISK before Q4
wouldn't be a bad idea to procure a few before their release. =) Until August 8th I'm piling up the NEO primarily though, as we all know that is when the NEO 2.0 launch is. Its already almost at 8 bucks and climbing.
Upvoted you. I think the most important aspect of NEO is the ability to use virtually any programming language on the platform. Let's face it, lost of people know JAVA Script, etc., but have you ever met anyone that know Solidity?
I totally agree I have never met anyone who knows that language and many people would like to stick with what they know. Programs such as Java, Python and such will allow a lot more users to create DApps on the platform
Looks promising, something else I believe is on the rise is QTUM.
I have not looked much into QTUM but will read up on it! Thanks for reading
I'm right with you, Qtum looks VERY interesting.
From the whitepaper;
"One of the primary goals of Qtum is to build the first UTXO-based smartcontract
system with a proof-of-stake consensus model."
"Furthermore, Qtum integrates
the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) together with the Bitcoin unspent transaction
output protocol. Note that the Qtum EVM constantly remains backwards
compatible. Additionally, the Qtum-framework recognizes that smart-contract
lifecycle management is important for supporting proper security vetting of collaborating
parties. To support Qtum lifecycle management, the current lingua
franca Solidity lacks suitability. Consequently, the emerging Qtum-framework
requires a novel smart-contract language with enhanced utility."
If they can pull this off, sounds very interesting indeed.
The FOMO is real, i may need to invest.
You should definitely read more into the platform! It is really promising but don't take just my word for it :)
Of course, it's been on my radar for a while man, thanks for the tip ;)
NEO, and EOS?
I am perosnally an EOS fan as I think they are further in development but EOS still has huge potential
A few thoughts on why I think NEO is better. (and I hold both NEO and EOS but just laying out some facts that make me go hrmm)