Today, on January 23rd, Block.one announced their new VC partner: Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital. Together they plan to invest over $300 million into EOS.IO developement.
Many traders around the world eagerly awaited the announcement.
One might say a little bit too eagerly.
The EOS Telegram group was flooded with people seemingly close to a mental breakdown over what they perceived to be a delayed announcement. After all, it was supposed to happen at '9 am Japan time' (which nobody ever said), and hours later there were still no news.
So for many hours, particpants in the chat contended themselfs with throwing around baseless speculation and false rumors about what the announcement was going to be.
Most people just named the largest company they could come up with and attempted to establish their wishes as 'confirmed rumor'. Others willingly took up their speculation, reinforced it and, soon enough, people actually believed their fantasies.
Seriously - If you were there you know what I'm talking about. It was a good example of a collective mania.
The price chart tells this story quite nicely:
The crazyness started around 15 hours before the livestream, round about '9 am Japan time'. (Yeah this literally went on for 15 hours.)
At the time I was browsing on some EOS related twitter Channels and noticed an interesting detail. All of them were followed by billionaire investor Mike Novogratz. I also remembered, that he mentioned EOS on CNBC a while back in a supportive way. A few more details matched the case, and I decided to write a short post, speculating, that Mike will be the awaited VC partner.
I remember being pleased with my hypothesis, and so I was curious about how it would be received by the EOS/Steemit community.
My post quickly gathered around 400 views, as many people searched for more information on the topic.
But - noone left a single upvote, aside from an info-bot telling me about the price of EOS.
Honestly, I was quite disappointed and concluded that my idea was just not relevant. I was contemplating to delete my post, as it looked a bit embarrassing with 400 views and no upvotes.
Fast forward 15 hours and Brendan Blumer actually announces Mike Novogratz to be their new VC partner.
Interesting, ey.
So how could it be, that no one else had considered him, and that everyone who came accross the idea did not take it seriously?
Why was it that most other predictions turned out to be far over-blown?
The answer to that, I believe, is rather simple.
People don't really care about realistic predictions.
People care about finding a way to believe whatever they want to believe.
So, when gaging the market, never trust the majorities' expectation.