As they say, history might not repeat itself but it certainly does rhyme.
For me, I am having deja vu all) over again. It seems like I saw this story before. Of course, many still fall victim to the same thing.
In this article, I am going to explain why it is foolish to buy into alot of the crypto narratives. We will illustrate this with a walk down memory lane.
The 1990s and the Internet
For those old enough to remember, there was once a world without smartphones, streaming, and wireless Internet. These are innovations of the last couple decades. The latter certainly made a huge impact upon society.
That said, the early days were far from clear. There was something called the dotcom bubble during the late 1990s. It was a time when the stock market went nuts over Internet stocks. The technology sector drove everything to absurd heights (at least for that era).
It was also a time when venture capital money was flowing like water. Kids were dropping out of prestigious universities to "start an app". For this, they received millions of dollars in funding.
The "Information Superhighway" was being built. Everyone was getting in on the modern day gold rush.
Then reality hit. Things came crashing down as the markets realized what truly was happening. While there were some good projects, most were crap. The college dropouts, did they even know how to code? I doubt many people asked.
Overnight, companies went from huge valuations to nothing. The era came to an end.
Of course, this isn't the end of the Internet story. That is not the era we are referring to. That was solid. Instead, the era of Internet stock insanity was put to rest.
From that point forward, building took place.
Insanity Revived (Again and Again)
Have no fear. The world did not suddenly get sane.
Cryptocurrency ushered in the insanity, but on steroids. Over the past 6 years, we saw a repeat of the DotCom era, on a number of occasions.
The DotCom era was one of technology and monetization. Through the stock market, projects were able to be values based upon market prices. This was rather novel considered, decades before, only the biggest and best were publicly traded.
As stated, cryptocurrency put it on steroids. There was no need to even go through the IPO process. Instead, simply have an ICO and put it on a website.
The problem with the crypto world is that every couple years we get a new buzzword. We certainly do love them in this industry. There was the ICO craze. Then DeFi. DAOs. Memes. SocFi.
And now we have AI.
All of these were tokenized. Man projects emerged, with a token, proclaiming a grand vision for the future. These things were going to change the world. Naturally, you had best get on board because this is the modern day gold rush.
Look at that list again. How many tokens from each of those periods is actually worth anything.
The main problem is the projects themselves are worthless. It is deja vu all over again.
A Lack of Building = Worthless Crap
During the 1980s, the fast food chain Wendy's made headlines with an ad series "Where's the Beef". It features an old lady at a competitor asking where's the beef on a hamburger.
To update that idea, and risk sounding like a broken record, "where the building". This is what everyone should be asking.
When looking at those buzzwords, how many projects were actually building stuff? Very few. The simply model is:
A lack of building = worthless crap.
Perhaps we can see why much of what is out there in crypto world is worthless. How many projects do you see talking about building value? About designing applications that actually offer value to the users. This could be in any of the areas yet, sadly, what we mostly see is buzzwords, white papers, and little else.
The Internet companies of today that were around during the DotCom era all have one thing in common: they kept building.
Amazon. Google. Priceline. Netflix.
Contrast this with dozens of other names you could look up from that period which are no longer around.
A token will not work out if the project is not developing and expanding. Sure, one might catch some hype, earning some money. However, as an investment, you are in the landfill surrounded by flies.
Concept Survive
We often hear how whatever the buzzword is dead.
That is incorrect. None of what is mentioned above is dead. All of them will have their day in the future. Fecentralized finance (DeFi) is going to be huge. ICOs will likely be the funding mechanism down the road. SocFi is legit.
What is dead is the projects which had tokens many were hyping. In fact, a case could be made they were never alive.
It gets old but that is why I continually harp on the builders. These are the ones who are making a difference. Look at the top Internet names from the early days and they all have that in common. Jeff Bezos. Mark Cuban. Mark Zuckerberg. The Google Boys.
The common theme is they kept expanding what they were creating. Some ended up selling out and moving onto other things but they remained until what they created had value.
This is the challenge for not only crypto, but everyone on Hive. What building are you doing and what are you following. If we are in the process of developing Web3, what part are you playing. It is a wide open arena, just like the early days of the Internet.
Fortunately, some tools are already in place to build without having the technical expertise. That is a major advantage over the past. Even if we are involved in something that is not our idea, tokenization allows us to have stake in the project. For this reason, there can be a direct correlation between our efforts and the ultimate value of our wallets.
Technology
Another reality is that we are dealing with nothing new. When it comes to technology, the failure rate is huge.
This is something that is not going to change. Success in this realm depends upon a ton of variables. For this reason, it is best to be leery of most projects. When it comes to the individual components, most projects will come up short on more than one.
Here we see the major problem.
Rug pulls are nothing new. The college dropouts received a ton of money from VC firms with no intention of building anything. That was the rug pull of that era.
If you want to succeed, get involved with those projects that are building stuff. They are not sexy on a daily basis but they is where the difference is. Most of what we see is more likely to end up as WebVan than Google.
Keep that in mind.