Hello everyone!
So I have been following the crypto market since late 2013, I was 16 at the time and in high school. I found out about Bitcoin through friends using it to buy stuff from the deepweb(:o), but I didn't realize the real potential of blockchain until I wrote a research paper for school with a friend of mine about Bitcoin. It required me to understand the technology behind it and more importantly to be able to explain how it worked to other people. I already owned Bitcoin at this point but did not understand how it worked or what you really could do with it. The only reason I bought some was because people on fora were saying it could be worth thousands of dollars. I was blown away by what I was reading during my research and I was obsessed, but I think it took me about a month to really start understanding how everything worked, as at the time good information was much harder to get by than it is now (still hard) for someone who doesn't know where to look.
Now, 3 years later, I am in university studying Finance as I have been into investing and the stock market since I was around 15. Thanks to this I learned to ask certain question while researching and it made me understand some things which I think that most people in this space do not. I also have experience in holding (losing) positions which I think most new people here do not. Because of this I have been very skeptical and scared most times during the past 3 years about my investments in this market. Not because I do not believe in my investments, but as I think most people investing in crypto currencies do not believe in theirs. Huge speculation and profits have set the focus of the majority of the people participating from supporting the best projects and educating theirselves about this new disruptive technology to trying to find the next scam coin or ICO to make a quick double up. People do not care nor know what they are investing in.
This is what made me write my first Steem post and this is something I will be addressing in further detail in later posts. I've been an active reader of most fora and news websites in this space for at least the past 2 or so years but this is the first time I've really felt I needed to post something. I feel that this problem needs to be addressed by the community before it results in a big correction of the whole market but more importantly I think this needs to change before the next stage of adoption can be reached.
The mentality of new people coming into this space is totally off, everybody is expecting to get rich overnight just by buying something. Most new 'investors' invest without understanding the basics of blockchain but more importantly have not read the whitepaper of what they invest in and do not understand what gives these coins the value they have or is given to them. I think the community should make an effort in trying to educate new investors in how everything works and address potential use cases in a way easy to understand. I think this will lead to less volatility as people will panic sell and panic buy (FOMO) much less as they understand the fundamentals and are less likely to solely follow other peoples/ the markets actions.
With this being said I do think the total market cap could fall to around $50M sometime this month, just because of people panic selling and the pressure on the Bitcoin price. Overall though, to decrease the chance of big drops in the total market cap from happening (now and in the future) the community as a whole should make good information easier accessible (best all in one spot) and the focus of the community should switch from investing/trading to educating the world about blockchain's enormous potential, as I do believe that we are not even at 1% of what the total market cap could be in let's say 25 years.
In my next posts I will talk about potential solutions and projects we could undertake to encourage longterm holding, education of new members and ways to combine the information spread out all over the internet.
I look forward to hearing your solutions and hope I can help empower the community!