I figured it would be a good time for a post like this.
There's some green on the horizon and a lot of people believe this to be the end of the bear market. I'm not saying it has to be, the charts have often proven to swing like half moons but if it is I would like to point out some things I would look out for when deciding to place my money into blockchain technologies. I want you to know though that this should not be taken as financial advice, prior events do not have to be repeated and even though I've been involved in this space for a long time doesn't mean it can surprise us all at any time.
What I can tell you though, that here on Steem you gotta be careful who you listen to. Especially at times like these where promotional votes are easy to be attained and advertising has never been this beneficial anywhere else in time and or history. I'm talking of course about accounts being able to buy themselves to the front-page with little to no risk. Make sure to check account age, amount of genuine followers and the accounts history before you decide to trust someone even with a little value. At times like these there are more people out there trying to sell you rat poison than they are trying to teach you something valuable. I've mentioned this before but for newcomers please be aware that people advertising on a decentralized blockchain are often exempt from laws, such as not having to disclose if what they are promoting is being paid for by someone else.
Having said that, I'm not going to go into detail about what exactly you should be investing in. I did something similar last year where I recommended certain projects and if you want to look into that in more detail and how some of those did, feel free to google "steemit acidyo alt-news" and you will find the posts in question. These were not just flat out recommendations of what to purchase and why, it was more about personal opinion of what could be a good purchase combined with news that came out about those projects at the time. Things may have changed since then as time in the crypto space moves fast.
With Bakkt around the corner, Fidelity setting up the infrastructure for institutional money and the VanEck ETF maybe about to be approved. This could be a good time to get in on those long term trades and investments. Things that you should look out for are in order of importance: age and stability of the blockchain, distribution of wealth, uniqueness of the technology, uniqueness of what they are trying to solve and most importantly; does this project need a blockchain.
There are many projects out there that may still be alive today after the ICO craze of 2017, barely surviving looking to continue drag money into their project when in reality its just the early buyers or owners trying to trade it in for another currency. There are many who just put the name blockchain behind their idea even though that idea may not need the advantages a blockchain gives to work in the real world. There are many building up fake volume and making themselves look important when in reality they are just using the low fees it costs to trade coins back and forth and there are many who are just copycats of something that existed before them and are pretending to do it better.
You have to try and look at it from the perspective of the early web combined with the dot com bubble. The majority of companies and ideas that sprung to life back then did not last very long so similar to that you have to imagine which of these projects are going to exist in 2, 5 or 10 years. I know that if you are a newcomer this is a difficult thing to judge especially if you have no idea what to look out for or where to do research or who to trust, that's why I'm making this post trying to highlight some of the key reasons of what makes a project worth the time put into it. I'd love to say "trust no one" cause everyone is out to get you, but that is not the full truth, there are people out there that have been in this space for a long time and don't need to sell their project so they can empty the bags they've been holding for years to you. It is hard to find them but on a decentralized platform such as Steem where no one can be censored would be a good place to look for some. Trust me, most of the other platforms will not make things easier for you at all. If you can though just do research on your own terms and keep the reasons of why this blockchain is needed that I mentioned earlier in the back of your head.
I am not going to get into ICO's in this post, it might be a good time to look for some good ones if this is the bottom of the bear market but at a time like this there are plenty of decent projects already existing that there might not be a need for new ones no matter how promising they are. I'm not saying there may not be a new one in the making that may bring in astronomical returns such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc have done in the past - but it will be a lot harder because the thing with open source blockchains is that many of them can improve. Some may be too old and the tech may not be able to be improved the same way, but some of those are okay with it as they will be able to do what they are set out to do with the tech they currently have.
I may start making posts about projects that I myself an invested in and explain my reasoning but I am not sure how big of an interest there is nor if I have the time for it as of now. Feel free to let me know in the comments what you think and if you have any questions about this post.
I'm gonna call it here and write a second part about fundamentals in the near future, hope this was of value to some of the new people in this space. I know that Steem is a great gateway for newcomers into blockchain thus I believe its important for those people to get a basic guide of what to look for if they are interested in getting skin in the blockchain game.
[Image Source pixabay.com]
