One year in crypto for me these days. As the natural born sceptic I am, it has been a journey that has surprised me. Both positive and negative. So what has there been to learn? A lot! And it will probably not stop.
Photo: Rod Waddington (Creative Commons)
My background
I have held stocks for 15 years plus. So the market lingo, the shills and the fud is nothing new to me. It's just magnified by a factor of 10 when you step into the minefield of cryptocurrencies.
Misunderstand me right: I like the idea of unregulated markets. But they sure bring out the worst in people.
Crypto is pure speculation
When you subtract the technical advances, the different crypto-tribes are nothing but a facade of manipulative tactics to make you believe this is the greatest ever. And yes: since the vast majority of tokens are knockoffs of old code erc20 and other cheap generic code. Yeah, I'm a bit unfair, I know. But explain me the value creation behind issuing a billion generic tokens, hype it and make people buy into an idea. Of course there is lots of dubious creations.
The devil is in the details
Litteraly! Just have a look at Satan coin;
I literally fell off my chair when I found it. A dash of humor from the leagues of Belzebub there. Take a look at the "black paper" (as opposed to whitepaper).
Fun for the right crowd. Stay clear if you care about finance and progression of technology.
Let the little children come to me
And this tribe thinking seems to be a common denominator to push the message. I have now witnessed two attempts to inflate bubbles on the bitshares blockchain with the exact same recipie: god, family and hallelujah!
The most intricate was arise. I should maybe write more extensively on it because of all the controversy surrounding it.
From the first impression, a noble goal:
- decentralized banking
- automated trading
- hardware keys
- ATM machines
- the list continues
The first thing that struck me was the comprehensive list of "yes, that would be neat" things and services. Is it too good to be true?
The second thing that struck me was the CEO Jared rice. Keen to find out more, I joined their group on telegram. And it was odd. Everything was odd. My primary interest was artificial intelligence and how that would work. The group however, was focused on tribe. Weird. It took me a while, but after listening to the tribal and unity speeches, I finally learned that yes, AI trading is coming to my favorite exchange. Coolness. I was sold.
I'll save more for later on the arise ordeal. In fact I think it is a textbook example of how not to launch a ico.
I am my own god
The next curious case is an odd-ball. Bitcoin Latina. It took me five minutes to write it off as unoriginal and a copy-paste project. It was enough to read the white paper.
- a fork of ethereum
- a name stolen from bitcoin
- a charity
- non-descript goals of launching into space
Heard it before? Yes.
And the same chanting on god family and blessings in their social media outlets. The same policing of thought and hushing of deviant ideas. They even went as far as to piss off the miners who sold their produce.
And to top everything off, the founder John gotts just could not help himself but act like god himself.
dial 911 when in a cult
Get out! There are other things to do with your life than to be in the mercy of serial liars and scammers. Not to mention there is much less stressful places to put your cryptofolio.
The cult thinking (crowd management) is a disease. Is your concerns answered in a satisfactory way? Are your technical questions answered satisfactory? That's what these social media outlets are for. Not for brainwashing.
I have a new "don't" in my checklist for ICOs: does the issuer call you "brother" or otherwise impose a family relation on you, do not give them money.
Simple.