So what drives price of any commodity, crypto, gold, pizzas, whatever? The money invested in it, right? Kind of, but not really. What if I told you that you could theoretically raise bitcoin from $15k to $20k by spending $1, and lower it from $25k to $1k by spending the same $1? Crazy right?
AN EXAMPLE
This is going to start out slow, I want to make sure I get everyone on the same page before I pick things up and lift the curtain. Stick with me here....
This is an example to help illustrate why prices aren't driven by money invested, but rather consensus and opinion. Lets imagine the following exists (we will use bitcoin as an example, but this is how everything on the planet works)
Lets say Bitcoin is currently priced at $10k (the last sale). From $11k to $99k, every $1k there is someone with a sell order of 1 full bitcoin. From $9k to $1 dollar, every $1k on the way down there is someone with a buy order of 1 full bitcoin.
So, right now if you wanted to buy bitcoin you have several options... meet the lowest seller's price of $11k, or, put your own buy order up, above the highest buyer's bid order (overcut them). If you decide to just place an order, the price doesn't change. If you decide the buy the $11k bitcoin, now bitcoins value is $11k, with a new lowest sell offer of $12k, and a highest buy bid of $10k. Someone else comes in an overcuts the buy bid and puts 1 BTC for sale for $11k. No trades are made until someone matches a buy/sell.
Okay, that's kindergarten stuff, most people here understand that. So how much money drove the price up in this situation? $11k, and BTC price raised 11/10, 1.10, or 10% from the last sale. Now the entire marketcap of BTC raised 10% (last sale multiplied by circulating supply). So it takes $11k to drive a 10% increase, right? Not at all. Lets look at what happens when news is released.
News comes out that Warren Buffet thinks bitcoin is a scam, a bubble, and he wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole because he only invests in things he understands and he doesn't understand crypto. People panic everywhere, and believe "this guy is smart, I'm overvaluing this thing".
Suddenly people don't want to buy this scam anymore, and the buy orders for $11k, $10, and $9k are taken down.
At the same time, the people wanting to sell start to panic and just want out. The guy at $32k (who just had that offer up "just incase it moons") drops down to $11k sell order. The guy at $12k, who was the lowest, now undercuts him to $10k.
The sellers see this undercutting and think that if these people want out, why am I buying in. The $8k guy pulls his offer, and so do the $7k, $6k and $5k guys. The highest offer is now $4k.
The sellers panic further, and the $14k guy undercuts the $10k guy and puts up a $9k sell. The $15k, 17k and 11k guys all see this flurry of panic and now a storm undercutting is triggered, to $8k, $7k, and $6k. The $8k order pulls his again and goes down to $5k.
The price on the buy and sell orders has moved around a ton, but no sales have actually happened yet. Technically, BTC is still "worth" $11k, and the market cap reflects that. All this horseshit has happened, and it only happened in 10 seconds, but the price hasn't moved yet.
The $27k guy wakes up and checks his phone. He had a $27k offer just incase the price moved also, and he also only has a tiny infinitesimal fraction of a BTC. Well, he decides "he's out" and fills $1 worth of the part of the $4k guys buy offer.
The latest price information is now updated, and BTC fell from $11k to $4k price per BTC with the movement of a single dollar.
This is exaggerated example, but this is what moves price. Not money in vs money out. The ONLY THING that moves price is perception.
OPINION FLOW AND NOT MONEY FLOW
Now the above example only happens if everyone simultaneously believe the same thing... this thing is shit. What happens in reality is there's no black and white, it's shades of gray. It's flow in vs flow out. But not MONEY, but rather OPNIONS.
If 66% of the holders of something all of a sudden unanimously decide that their asset is overvalued, then they panic sell. Even if 33% of the people decide they are going to buy up as much as these panic sellers sell, if the panic is strong enough, and they are slitting eachother's throat to sell, then the buyers just happily sit and let them do that, and time their buys in. Very little money has to actually change hands in order for this price to crash, all that matters is the FLOW OF OPINION has to be swift and violent, and in majority. The sellers will leapfrog eachother on the way down, faster than the buyers scoop up their sales, and the net result is a crashed price.
So now what happens?
Time goes by and all holders opinions of their asset hasn't changed. They still think it's worth $11k and they got great deals scooping up these sellers selling. Now news releases start coming out about how stock ETFs are being created, NASDAQ index funds, bank support, government support. Companies are using this tech, and companies who use blockchain for transportation are putting non-blockchain companies out of business.
The people on the outside looking-in feel they are missing out. They now start coming in and buying. They start overpricing eachother on their buy orders, and eventually it gets close enough to a sell order that someone decides they are just going to meet the sell price. The sale goes through.
Sellers (HODLERs) see this action, and they start pulling sell orders off the table almost as fast as they fill. Sure some trades go through, and incoming money is driving the price up as market orders are filled. But what's also happening is people are seeing this flurry of volume, and sellers are pulling sell orders and placing them higher.
Money is coming in, but more importantly, OPINION IS CHANGING. Literally nothing could have happened in terms of fundamentals, partnerships, etc... this can all be driven entirely emotional, so long as it's wide-spread and strong. Infact, the market could THEORETICALLY rebound in this way from $4000/BTC to $1 MILLION PER BITCOIN by the sale of ONE PENNY.
WHO HAS THE POWER?
For example, if every sell order was removed and replaced at $1 million / BTC, and everyone refused to sell until this price (and no undercutting happened on the sell side), then buyers are just sitting there overcutting eachother, leapfrogging and closing the gap. So long as overall opinion remains strong, then it becomes up to the buyers to decide if they are willing to pay, how much they are willing to pay, etc.
The sellers are making their stand, and all the power is in the buyers hand, meet it or don't.
Eventually someone on one of the sides capitulates and a sale happens. Then people see this "new fair value" and they start setting up buy/sell orders in and around that price. Flow in and flow out are determined, for both:
- How hard buyers are pushing through sell orders, and how hard sellers are pushing through buy orders (money in vs money out)
but ALSO, and often more importantly, especially on crashes
- How frequent people are pulling unmet buy and sell orders off the table and replacing them with new ones to make more money, based on their OPINION on where this is going.
SO WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS?
A lot of new money has come in, and they don't really know what they are investing in. Sure a lot of new money has come in and done great research, are smart investors, and are buying solid tech. Most people, to be quite frank, they are buying Symbols and Names and trading on speculation.
These people came in because their OPINION has been heavily influenced in Nov, Dec, Jan, and they saw this money making machine. They were willing to pay huge, ride the wave up, keep buying, etc. They were "ground floor adopters" and were going to get rich.
They outnumber the old money by A LOT. Their OPINION MATTERS. It matters the most.
They are also a VAST MINORITY of "new money" that will enter the game in the next decade.
Their opinion rose nearly unbounded and price rose accordingly. Market cap rose from 10B to 750B, and it could have been VERY LITTLE actual money that did this. How much did it need to be though? Literally ONE PENNY, theoretically. All that matters in moving price is MOMENTUM OF OPINION. I believe it has been estimated that as low as 6B USD was responsible for the bull rush.
These people then started hearing "Bubble", "Scam", Fake news about governments banning. They don't understand how technology wins, always. Crypto is beyond government control. If they could have stopped Bitcoin they would have done it already.
WHO IS DRIVING ALL THIS?
Most investment opportunities go first to "credited investors". You need to have multimillions in order to get in on the ground floor for most stock IPOs, and we're seeing that start to happen with coin ICOs. Bitcoin was a joke for the first few years, while lunatics picked it up. At this point, it was really too late to get in "early", and who would have wanted to anyways, it was all still a joke. So Wallstreet, banks, governments have generally watched on the sidelines as average Joes who were crazy enough to be early adopters and toss $100 on fake internet money slowly became millionaires.
Not only that, but the idea of blockchain started to become understood. The power and value in it became understood. Not only as a way to track "monetary value" but for many other applications as well. Platforms were created, business uses brainstormed, products started being made. This thing started taking off, and wasn't a joke anymore. But regardless, big money wasn't in on the ground floor. They have stakeholders opinions to think of, and what do they say to investors when they lose all their money on magic internet points?
But they have woken up now. This thing has "popped" many times now and keeps recovering. This thing won't die. could they have been wrong all along? If they want in, how do they get in? They are no dummies, they have been controlling the world their whole lives? Look at the media experiment that Trump is doing? He is testing just how we work... you can do literally anything and we remember it for like 30 seconds, until the next news story comes out. We change opinions very easily. We are swayed very easily. We are their puppets. Media controls the world. They know their way in.
They have ONE WEAPON against cryptocurrency.
YOUR OPINION OF IT.
And they fucking know it.
Media.
That's why FUD is so powerful and needs to be respected. It's why we need to read more than titles on news articles. We need to question what we read, whether it's good news or bad news. We need to think about "what are the motives of the person saying this to me". Does the government have a conflict of interest when they state that crypto is gambling? Do they have skin in the game?
What about wall street? Does WEISS ratings possibly have incentive to come out with poor ratings? Do banks have incentive to lock accounts in order to "protect" customers from "unsafe investments"? Do you think banks have any super secret hidden interest in having all your money in their control? I'm not sure, maybe you can critically think about that.
Just understand that this goes both ways, and THAT IS THE GAME. Is crypto undervalued or overvalued at it's price today? Where is the price going long term? I'm not talking about it's use case, I'm talking about in the court of public opinion, where is THAT going? Because THAT is what is going to drive price in the future.
Now it could very well be that the technology having a use-case will in and of itself drive opinion, and thus price. But make sure you understand that it's not the technology itself, it's not the value of the business itself, it's not the use case itself that will drive price, it is the publics OPINION of that thing which drives price. They are intertwined, but they are NOT the same thing.
TLDR: VERY VERY little money has to move around in order to swing prices drastically, up or down. Money in and out doesn't drive price, OPINION does. How do you let the news you read impact your opinion?How are you being played (on both sides, shilling and FUD).
Something is only worth what people think it's worth. Often that's based on reality, value, business, money, but often it's entirely emotional.
In closing
Do the people who have missed this grass roots movement and are watching average Joes retire earlier than them, does big money who has been sitting on the sidelines, do these people, who control the media have any stake to be gained by crashing prices, to steal your ground floor, early adopter position, on a technology that has the capability to revolutionize the way that every aspect of business is performed in the world? Do they have incentive to modify your OPINION? Do they want in? Do they want you out?