Hey everyone, it’s Whatever Wednesdays again. This will just be a short post to ponder the question “Is Crypto Alive Again?”
Is Crypto Alive Again?
The answer is “kind of”.
My last few posts in general about crypto have been pretty pessimistic or “bearish” if you will. In general, crypto is mostly just speculative.
Why is there a “bull run” all of the sudden?
Well, in the last few days, we’ve seen Bitcoin have two separate run ups to $5000, when it was sitting around $4000 for a pretty long time. That’s a pretty significant 20% increase in a very short amount of time.
The reason for this insane jump in price appears to have been a Bitcoin Whale who bought about $100 million of Bitcoin across 3 separate exchanges.
As the saying goes, as Bitcoin goes, so do the altcoins. So, as you would expect there were significant gains in the altcoins.
For example, let’s look at the two I hold:
Cardano (ADA) was hanging around $0.075, and now is sitting around $0.093, with its recent peak being around $0.099. (4/1/19 – 4/3/19)
Ripple (XRP) was hanging around $0.31, and now is sitting around $0.338, with its recent peak being around $0.364. (4/1/19 – 4/3/19)
Back at the peak of crypto mania in late 2017 and early 2018, we saw fluctuations in price like this daily. However, in recent months, there hasn’t been that much movement.
So what’s going to happen?
In my opinion: Nothing.
The technology still isn’t ready yet. However, this may be the start of people once again taking another look at cryptocurrencies. The people who got into crypto back in late 2017 and early 2018, who bought at the peak, have probably already cut their losses and got out. It was too soon, something that Charles Hoskinson has said repeatedly back then when he warned of a crash and consolidation (January 2018).
The truth of the matter is that blockchain, cryptocurrency, and its technology still have a long way to go for what they could be. However, maybe this time people will actually take the time to look into what the technology is and do their own research. Perhaps they may even learn something.
Cryptocurrency, for me, was always a long term gamble. I’ve never technically “sold” any cryptocurrency I ever bought, meaning I’ve never withdrawn it back into the good US Dollar (fiat). Of course, because crypto is taxed as property, any time you traded one crypto for another, you are forced to pay taxes on it. Like a good citizen, I paid the taxes of any capital gains I saw on paper. In reality, I can say that I am still down overall. That said, I don’t own much of it anyways, so it isn’t a huge deal to me.
Anything else?
Yes.
I think that 2019 will be an interesting year for crypto, but not in terms of excitement from price action and bull runs. I am hopeful that we will begin to see more dApp creation and real world usage.
As the space matures, I think we will begin to see more heavy hitters join the space. These heavy hitters will bring in more bright minds and evolve the space to new levels.
It’s also interesting that the SEC has issued a “no-action letter”:
https://www.sec.gov/divisions/corpfin/cf-noaction/2019/turnkey-jet-040219-2a1.htm
You can read a more in-depth article from Forbes here:
Now then, while this doesn’t mean anything for the current cryptocurrencies out there, it does at least provide some guidance. More so than that, it gives some degree of legitimacy to the cryptocurrency space in general.
Before any kind of mass adoption of cryptocurrencies can occur, some degree of regulation or guidance will likely need to happen first. After this, I would expect more institutional money to publically enter the space. If my hunch is correct, I think institutional money has already entered the space privately in the shadows.
TL;DR
Crypto is alive — but it was never really dead.
That said, it’s still young, and has a long way to go.
It’s still a long shot gamble, and I think time horizons are somewhere in the 5 to 10 year region.
Only invest what you can afford to lose — and pay your taxes.
-Sensei
Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.
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