When first buying any cryptocurrency, we are told volatility is to be expected. We are told to expect those big dips everyone talks about, to which we all of course reply, ‘its ok, I won’t panic (aka I got balls)’. With the most recent crash we can obviously see this was not the case for most people. Panic is the rocket fuel for market manipulators and when you sell, you play right into their hands. It’s important to realise that the crashes are actually getting smaller and it would seem people are wising up as a culture of ‘hodlers’ (people who buy and hold) evolve into battle scarred spartan warriors, bracing for impact and holding at all costs. Time and time again this has proven to be the right approach, so why sell? You only need to look back into Bitcoin’s history at other crashes to realise, crashes happen, but, would you really care about it if the price came back with a vengeance and recovered close to 1000%? I think not.
There is no doubt about how much money is at play here and it seems people will do whatever it takes to try and earn even more. Most recently, there was someone claiming to represent the PBoC (People’s Bank of China), disclosing extreme restrictions on all aspects and services of Bitcoin trading, both in mainland China and Hong Kong. This turned out to be false. The Bank claimed their email was hacked and used to send this false information. Thankfully, a lot of media outlets saw through this bogus email and did not post the news until they had real confirmation. My hope is that this is the start of the media wising up, but to be honest, I am not too optimistic. The amount of money to be made by manipulating the media into posting false information about Bitcoin seems too much to be neglected; I feel this is just the start of more and bigger attempts.
A simple look back to the last couple of months shows a multitude of misgivings, false advertising and foul play in the market. Bitcoin Cash is a perfect example of this. Let’s have a look at the main Bitcoin twitter account, which is owned by Bitcoin.com. Emil Oldenburg, co-founder of Bitcoin.com came out to various media outlets to state that he had sold all his Bitcoin, mentioning it was “virtually useless” and so exchanged it all for Bitcoin Cash. Now let’s take a look at the twitter account. A simple look and a little knowledge will reveal exactly the kind of foul play I am talking about. They put Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin side by side, comparing them using false statistics. They are openly being critical of Bitcoin using false transaction times and fees. I am pretty sure most people who have sent Bitcoin recently are not getting fees higher than 5 USD, yet the twitter account states fees are over 13 USD a transaction, REGULARLY. If you are paying anything higher for fees on your Bitcoin transactions, do some research and look into Segwit because you are doing something wrong! So now the question is, why would someone go through all this trouble to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt? I will tell you. Money. To pump up the coin that they bought. Why buy the main Bitcoin domains if you are supporting another cryptocurrency? They use these outlets, who newbies see as official, to spread whatever news they want and because people coming into Bitcoin expect easy money, they don’t do much research. This is a massive problem. As the recent crash shows, when Bitcoin goes down, they ALL GO DOWN so why spread FUD about Bitcoin when it’s the one thing that seems to be holding everything up? Whether Bitcoin Cash is a ‘sh*tcoin’ or not is another topic entirely on which you will have to make your own decision, but, you cannot deny that these sort of tactics of false information being spread are not at all healthy! Why not square up the two cryptocurrencies with their real facts?
Another example; when the finance minister in South Korea announced a ban on crypto exchanges early 2018, you could have wondered, how is it possible that the finance minister of South Korea, could be the one to announce such a thing in such a bureaucratic country? If you would have thought about it for a minute you would realise that there was some foul play going on here. Even the BBC reported the possible ban. If you had done your research you would have known that in 2018 at least 50 exchanges were to be opened in South Korea. Demand is booming. How is it then possible that they would ban all cryptocurrencies? Later it of course came out that a ban would not have even been possible and the finance minister spoke out of turn.
So, why don’t people inform themselves? Why do people sell in panic predicting an impending doom? Unfortunately there is no easy answer to this; this is a conclusion everyone must come to themselves by looking at ALL sides of an argument. Blocking off something because ‘we don’t like it’ will not make it go away. In fact, it will most likely grow because we are not informing ourselves and combating the FUD with FACT.
So now the REAL question is, how does one discern the fake from the real? How does one discern truth from lies when even the more trusted media outlets in the world get conned into reporting fiction as fact or white lies? In this life, if you are old enough, you will know that nothing comes easy and nor does the truth. Research takes time, but, we have a miraculous wealth of knowledge at our disposal. Search engine’s are your friend. Reddit is your friend. These are just a few places of the many places where you can get your information to discern your own truth. Fact check every piece of information you absorb and use that lovely brain your mother gave you to come to your own conclusions, otherwise you are merely regurgitating what the last person said and if you wouldn’t bet your money on that person then when crash time comes again, it might not be so easy to hold. For the whole markets sake, do some research, otherwise, I guarantee you will be one of those panic sellers next time round. It is a lot easier to hold if you know news to be fake or have enough information at your disposal to reasonably believe so, because, then you too believe the price is likely to recover when the lies eventually come to light; they always do, eventually... You might even be inclined to buy the dip when this happens. If you bought into the crash at around 6k USD for BTC, at the time of writing now, you could have been up close to 70% of your initial investment already. Not bad for having a little information at your disposal and doing a little research eh? You could in hindsight have used this info that you came across to sell higher, preparing to buy the dip, but, you could just as easily have ended up selling and then having to buy in again higher like Michael Novogratz, the famous Bitcoin bull said he once had to, losing millions of dollars because if it.
It is very hard to hold money in something that you know nothing about. Especially a lot of money. The market is merely a mechanism of transferring wealth from the impatient to the patient. Some people get lucky, riding the Bitcoin wave from 1000 to 20,000 USD, but, you cannot take that as the rule, as most people who have earned substantial amounts were long term holders. This is the rule. Buy now and always be prepared to hodl till zero.