The cryptocurrency market didn’t do all that well during the first three months of 2018. All the big names have gone through some major corrections after reaching record highs. Cryptocurrencies began the year worth a collective $820 billion but just a month later, by February 6th, this had dropped all the way down to $279 billion.
It’s obvious that the cryptocurrency market has been a bear one, and it’s also clear that we’ve not seen what the ultimate low would be. There is always a further depth to sink to, after all. Even so, more and more people are becoming bearish about cryptocurrencies and even crypto bulls, particularly the ones that were late to the party, are wondering if we’re witnessing the death of cryptocurrency.
Well, crypto isn’t dead, no matter what critics say.
The Critics
The main critics of cryptocurrencies are governments, financial institutions, central banks, and now information gatekeepers are getting involved as well.
Warren Buffet, a respected investing genius that is known to every investor, recently declared in January that crypto will come to a bad end. Charlie Munger held back even less and said he felt bitcoin was completely asinine and nothing short of poison to anyone that would invest in it.
Let’s give them some credit and admit that their investment track records have never been favorable towards new technology. The first time they bought a tech stock it was investing in IBM in 2011 and then again in 2016 when they invested in Apple.
They’ve never been involved with the biggest names in tech including Google, Netflix, and Amazon. It’s hardly surprising that these two of all people would criticise the emerging technology of blockchain. It’s likely they simply don’t understand it because they’ve never been interested in emerging tech. Then again, lots of people seem confused about what the blockchain is and what it does.
Other investors have made their opinions clear as well. Jamie Dimon made some comments that everyone remembers when bitcoin was worth around $3,000 (before exploding to $20,000). Another problem for crypto is that certain major governments are regulating it heavily and some are completely opposing it.
China has been a major critic of crypto. Pan Gongsheng, a deputy governor at the People’s Bank of China said that the only thing left to do with bitcoin is sit at the riverbank and watch as its body floats by. There are several central bankers calling for the regulation, if not prohibition, of using cryptocurrency and other platforms based around the blockchain.
The ICO market has come under scrutiny lately and has been at the front of regulation discussions. Just last week there were reports of the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States) issuing subpoenas to companies issuing ICOs, hedge funds investing in ICOs, and even exchanges that are trading ICOs and other tokens deemed to be securities. There’s no doubt that the uncertainty surrounding ICOs and the issue of regulation as a whole played a major role in the sell off in the market.
Finally, there is the matter of leading internet companies outright banning advertising and content related to cryptocurrencies. Facebook recently announced in January that they would be banning crypto ads, and Google has decided to follow suit and also ban ads.
There is always the chance that there is a good reason they are doing this; such as wanting to protect investors from becoming victims of the latest ICO scam or Bitconnect. As nice as that thought is, there’s likely more to it than just that. There’s plenty of worse things being hosted on those platforms too, so it’s hard to believe it’s for moralistic reasons.
Bitcoin and the blockchain are decentralised. They are unregulated. This kind of technology and decentralization is a threat to every centralised power structure. So it’s not hard to see why they would be against them. This is the very nature of anything that goes peer-to-peer. The decentralised nature of crypto makes it easy to use crypto to bypass capital controls and deal with people looking to control and restrict information. No matter how hard the critics fight though, they will never succeed. It’s not like one can put everything back in the box and pretend it never existed. The cat is out of the bag and will never go back in.
There’s no doubt that crypto is in it for the long run. The question isn’t whether crypto will even have a future or not. What we’re wondering is what that future will look like, as it will definitely exist. Other major companies are getting involved with adopting the technology and innovating it even further, and there has never been more demand for blockchain developers.
It was obvious during the latest Congressional hearing about cryptocurrency that legislators are in agreement there should be at least some kind of regulation on cryptocurrency. What was also apparent was that there were plenty of legislators that were also keen to preach the need to maintain a balance and not kill innovation through regulation. The rise of cryptocurrency has proven to be similar to the rise of the internet, in that the countries embracing the technology and encouraging innovation are going to benefit the most. Crypto isn’t going anywhere so it’s much better to focus efforts on innovating and embracing it rather than on fruitless efforts to kill it.
Falling Prices
Cryptocurrency prices have been falling dramatically since the start of 2018. Anyone who purchased a coin at the peak is down by between 50-80% depending on which coin they chose to invest in. There was a massive price increase in the last quarter of 2017 as there was a strong bull run for the market.
It was only inevitable that these strong moves would be following by the market correction that we’re seeing now. This doesn’t mean the market value will go all the way down to zero, nor will they drop as low as things got when the last bull cycle started. There is one simple question that we must consider; what is the lowest point?
There are sure to be projects that will come and go, and there are some names that will never again reach such heights. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that.
On the other hand though, some of the big names we all know will go above and beyond the heights they just fell from, and there are plenty of other names no one has even heard of yet that are going to be major winners.
Crypto is still young and it’s moving fast. Things are innovated in the blink of an eye and we’re still establishing the true market leaders. Payment systems and currency are just the first applications of the blockchain, and more and more uses are being developed ready to be implemented. We expect platform tokens like NEO and ETH and Privacy Coins such as Zcash and Monero will go from strength to strength.
Don’t listen to the critics; crypto is far from dead!
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