What is REQ?
For those of you who don't know, REQ is the ticker for "Request Network", which I only bought about 500 units of because I took a quick look at the whitepaper and the project and basically said, "They're trying to do what countless other currencies are trying to do, nothing new here."
Not really sure what's going on but REQ has experience a huge pump on Binance today.
I did notice that there was a bunch of praising posts on /r/CryptoCurrency such as: this, this, this and many more. Maybe it's the excitement that the new year is coming and what 2018 will bring for REQ? I'm not sure.
Maybe their approach is somewhat novel, but all they had was a roadmap and a whitepaper. Nothing had been done yet - and looking at their roadmap, I honestly thought it would be wishful thinking that they'd get all of that done in Q4 2017.
And yet, here we are.
I guess having a strong team and being supported by YCombinator DOES mean something.
If you're interested, here is their main site and here is their whitepaper. I encourage you to at least skim the whitepaper and understand what the market fit for this crypto is before putting in some of your hard earned cash.
Pumps
It's hard to make a general statement about pumps but most of the time I would say that they're due to FOMO. For us early adopters this is probably a good thing - we can rake in some profits at the unreasonably rising price. But what does it mean for the project?
For projects that are scams by design (i.e shitcoins and scamcoins) this isn't a big deal - the pumpers dump all of their holdings and watch as the candlesticks turn red, until inevitably the coin dies.
But in the case of a legitimate project, such as Request Network, pumping can be damaging. Why? Because it's somewhat unnatural price movement. Growing popularity is good, but unreasonable growth isn't. Sooner or later there's going to be a huge correction which will discourage many would-be adopters.
We are following greater fool theory to the dot: these prices are completely above what they should be and are driven by FOMO, irrational beliefs of getting rich quick and "mooning". At the end of the day, whether you are an investor or a true supporter of cryptocurrencies as a whole and want to see them succeed, the more these pumps keep happening the less popular we'd be with the mainstream.
Also, the more it makes crypto a bubble. Everybody has a different opinion on this so I would say mine doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. Maybe it's because this is the first bubble I've actively participated in? I don't know.
Tell me what you guys think: is REQ going to blow us away in 2018 and moon, or will it die early? Would love to hear Steemit's ideas.