Hey everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again, which is really Crypto Wednesdays nowadays. Today we’re going talk about “What is Cardano?”
What is Cardano?
What is Cardano?
If you’ve been following my crypto posts, then you know that out of all the cryptos I believe in Ripple (XRP) and Cardano (ADA). In recent memory, Cardano is one of the poster children for the volatility that is the cryptocurrency space. It showed up as the new kid on the block around September 2017, but then quickly moved into the top ten in market cap. It hit an all-time high of $1.37 in January during the crazy run-up where Bitcoin was trading for nearly $20k. Such a crazy run was not sustainable, and a “correction” — which was really a crash, was expected.
Cardano was hit harder than most of the other cryptocurrencies, dropping down to $0.12 from it’s all time high of $1.37, that’s a more than 90% drop from an all-time high. The reason for this was multifactorial, but mostly because during the “craze” of January, Cardano saw huge speculation. Then, after the crash, people pulled out of anything that didn’t have a working product, at least what they thought was a working product.
Cardano is a working product, but it isn’t fully decentralized yet, and won’t until Shelley era sometime end of Q2, maybe early Q3. You can imagine that during the crash of early Q1 that people pulled out of what people considered “vaporware”. If you add in that Cardano’s vision is so large, and multi-year, then people basically assumed that there was no money to be made in Cardano.
For Cardano’s price to go down to $0.12, even for a short time is pretty much ridiculous to me. Even when it was trading sideways for $0.15, that’s an unbelievable deal.
So what happened?
Well, in terms of Cardano, nothing has really changed in terms of fundamentals. The plan is still the same, the team is still great, and they are working toward releasing Shelley. However, there was a slight run-up in Bitcoin recently which carried Cardano up with it.
Then, Huobi (A Chinese Exchange) decided to list Cardano (ADA), and just a little bit after that, Binance decided to list an ADA/USDT pair. This may not seem all that exciting if you were to just read it. However, because China could not previously buy Cardano (ADA) as it was only on Bittrex and Binance before, then you have increased the amount of trading significantly. It’s also important to understand that Binance only has 8 pairs with USDT (Tether), which is also somewhat of an exclusive club to be a part of.
These small things in tandem can make a big change in the price of a cryptocurrency.
Cardano was no different, it went from $0.15 or so to ~$0.27 or so in a matter of a few days, now trading around $0.25. This is a significant increase, but still far below it’s all-time high of $1.37.
Why does this matter?
What I find interesting about Cardano is that it has done literally zero marketing.
While other cryptocurrencies are actively paying the media to report on them or other crazy marketing campaigns, Cardano has not anything except for the CEO of IOHK, Charles Hoskinson giving interviews for free. He’s openly stated that he will never pay for or get paid to do any interview. Although relatively quiet, I think the Cardano community is very strong.
There is a ton of information about Cardano. To be honest, it’s kind of daunting to try to understand what they’re trying to do. It can not be summed up in a few interviews, a white paper, or a few interviews. The vision for Cardano is very ambitious, and some may think its too ambitious.
What do you think?
I’m a believer in Cardano. I bought a little bit at $0.25 when I was crypto noob back in 2017. However, like I’ve said before, I own only a very small amount of cryptocurrency. So the price swings we’ve seen don’t really matter for me. It’s just my way to have some skin in the game and come along for the ride. I don’t plan to ever sell any of Cardano until at least 2025.
If you’re interested in investing in Cardano (or any crypto for that matter), be ready for a rollercoaster ride. Also, only invest (gamble) with what you can afford to lose.
First things first, if you want to understand the vision in a very simplistic manner, start with this playlist.
I’ve received some positive feedback on this video my daughter (Crypto Kylie) made with my help.
Then, if you want to go deeper down the rabbit hole, then just keep watching the playlist — at your leisure. This playlist is hours and hours of videos in chronological order with interviews that Charles has given or presentations he has done. You’ll learn a lot about the vision of Cardano.
If you’re more of a reader type, then you can go here:
And then here:
Where do you see Cardano headed?
The best case scenaro is that Cardano will become a huge success in ways that I haven’t even conceived of yet. It will be a platform to run smart contracts that scales with its number of users, but still is able to help other cryptocurrencies (and legacy systems, the banks) interact with one another. Additionally, it will have its own governance system to continue to improve perpetually. After that, if they can realize their ambitions far in the future, we may see Cardano be the way to bank the unbanked and change the current financial system from the outside in.
I think we will know for sure just how successful Cardano is if/when we see them develop a value stable currency. Like I said, this is a very ambitious project. It may eventually become a household name, or it may become so integrated into society that my children (or grandchildren) won’t even know it’s running the background anymore.
In the worst case scenario, I think Cardano will be a failed experiment, one from which other cryptocurrencies which come after it will learn from (and steal from). It will be studied and the future will learn from it did right (and wrong). Even if it isn’t the project the change the world, even if it fails, it will be considered part of the history of cryptocurrencies that tried. It’s not just some Ponzi scheme like Bitconnect or other get-rich ICO exit scams we’ve seen this last year or so.
Hmmm… anything else?
Yea.
In my humble opinion, what Cardano won’t be is a project that everyone forgets about and didn’t matter.
I think that whether Cardano fails or succeeds, it still won’t be forgotten. With my own small part, I put a little skin in the game and bet on something that I believed would change the world.
I guess, when it all comes down to it — I’m a dreamer.
TL;DR
Cardano is an interesting cryptocurrency, one of the few I believe in.
No shortcuts this time, if you want to try to understand it, you’ll need to Do Your Own Research (DYOR).
Scroll up and watch the YouTube videos and click the links.
-Sensei
Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.
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