With the events of late 2017, it is becoming more apparent that the current cryptocurrency market is not sustainable. We can now see the cryptos pushed to the limit and many of them not withstanding the pressure. But how did it become like this? This was supposed to revolutionize the world of money and to bring freedom, not more slaves of margin trading.
From my humble perspective of a mere observer, it seems that not enough people talk about this problem. If they do, they are being overshadowed by fanatic HODLers and eternal watchers of the price history. So what is that problem we do not talk about? The value of the cryptocurrencies, of course. Do I contradict myself? I beg you to withhold your judgement for a bit longer.
When I first heard about bitcoin, it was intriguing. A way to escape the goverment's total control of money? A decentralized system, a place where I could deposit my savings without worrying about them losing value over time? It sounded too good to be true, so I just quitely watched, partly because I did not have any funds to put into what I did not completely trust anyway.
A couple of years later, what is everyone talking about? Is it still worth it to invest in bitcoin? Did I miss the train? What other coins are going to explode? Should I sell my XYZcoin?
In short: How do I earn more fiat money with cryptocurrencies?
It does not matter whether you measure the value in USD, BTC or ETH. If you can represent the worth by a number, you are helping to dig the grave. Instead, look at the true merit: the potential to substitute the current money with something, through which can be a value accurately measured and exchanged so that the exchanging sides profit.
Tell me, what value are the margin traders exchanging except the monetary value? The crypto-market has become the very thing it swore to destroy. It is centralizing again, this time around exchanges and whales. The government involvement won't be holding back for long. Cryptos are being adapted, integrated into the estabilishment, the crowd cheers and the rich are becoming richer. When uninvolved people first hear about cryptocurrencies, they usually hear about all those who got rich, not about any good it brought to society. This is not a market in which I want to participate.
If we don't search for more ways to actually use those currencies, they will become useless. Therefore I have to applaud projects like steemit and all those who don't simply sit on their money, but try to create real value by putting them to use. HODLers only further inflate the bubble. It is about time to finally pop it and move onto doing something productive.