Last night I found myself in the company of 3 guys who are fellow native English speakers, a breed which, though I have grown up with, I rarely find myself in long, face to face conversations with. As such, I found myself surprised at the level with which crypto has become a mainstream topic of conversation back in good ol Mericuh.
It seems everyone had a different stance and level of understanding of the stuff. As I’m not usually one to push a conversation unless I see a reason to do so, I sat and listened first, trying to feel them out a bit to see if I wanted to bite.
(Guys talking about stock market)
Guy 1 (unacquainted) : the stock market yeah.....I think I should stay away from markets for a while...crypto is crashing.
Guy 2 (loose acquaintance): yeah, you are asking for trouble with crypto. Everyone was nuts about it 3 weeks ago and now the same people are ready to jump off a bridge.
Guy 1: Yeah, I guess I’m one of those guys....I’m down 70% from last week.....I feel like an asshole.
Guy 2: I generally stay away from things I can’t make sense of and it seems no one can make sense of this stuff.
Guy 3 (the only one I’d consider a friend, although not incredibly close) remains silent. He either hates the stuff (not likely), is trying to keep it a secret that he’s a cryptomillionaire or....could it be...he fell for.....BITCONNEEEEEEEEEEEEEECT!
He’s probably just one of those guys who doesn’t like to share much about his financial situation, and maybe feeling the hurt of the red market. I also remain silent and the conversation moves to some other topics, of which I cannot relate, so I check in at discord...then coinmarketcap. They hit an awkward silence just as I realize the markets are back in the green.
“It looks like your coins are going to be ok, friend.” I say to the new guy.
His mood suddenly changes from one of cynicism to that of a kid who just got out of a dangerous situation by the skin of his teeth.
“It does this every January, this year was complicated by a bunch of things, bitcoin futures, new regulations, not to mentioned the fact that the level of growth of December was unsustainable.”
Everyone looked at me, waiting for more. I was suddenly being treated like an expert.....and in comparison, I was.
“Which coins do you have?”
Guy 1: I started with litecoin and one that’s really really unknown called Status. I made about $1000 on those and traded them for bitcoin and Etherium....I’ve lost more than half this past week though.
“Those sound like good plays to me, btc and eth are less volatile, you know, comparatively, they are likely to recover faster and even if they don't, they will surely recover. You have the safest coins out there. They probably won’t shoot up again right away but give it a few days, or even a few weeks and you’ll start to believe that they WILL recover and by the end of the year, at the VERY LEAST you will probably have twice what you had last week, as long as you don’t get sucked into any scams.”
He just kind of stared into space as a light smile came to his face. I realized how much he had been freaking out inside while trying to keep his mind off the markets earlier.
“Also Status isn’t an unknown coin. I’m pretty sure it’s a coin tied to a messenging app which sounds pretty cool, and it’s in the top 30. Top 30 out of over 1500 coins, half of those may be scams but the other half aren’t. It does seem a bit overvalued up that high but at this point I can’t say because I haven’t done research on it, you might have sold it at the perfect time”.
I had obviously done more research on it then him though.
Finally a smile came to his face. I looked at guy 3, his face still grim.... “BITCONNEEEEEEEEEEEEEECT” ...I thought to myself, and smiled back at guy 1.
It shocked me how much more I knew about crypto than the casual investor. I’ve essentially only spent 2 months researching it and while I’m practically a newb myself, I was a guru in comparison to these guys. Why shouldn’t I be? I’m essentially immersed in crypto every day just being at steemit.
You don’t even have to like the idea of crypto, I have my doubts, but you should know that it’s going to be a huge influence on the direction of our future. It’s best to know more about it. You have direct access here st steemit. You are knee deep in it so take advantage of that and help your panicky uninformed friends out.
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