There is only one question that you need to answer regarding your foray into cryptocurrency.
Do you believe blockchain is going to have a substantial impact upon the world or won't it?
That is it.
You should be fearful of your stake in cryptocurrency if you believe that blockchain will be a footnote in history. If you are a person who believes that, yeah there are parallels to the Internet but it will never be able to replicate that, then I guess all this is a pointless exercise. Of course, to take that view, one would have to overlook a host of evidence to the contrary. Blockchain is, by far, the hottest technology this year and I am not talking in terms of hype. Between the money invested, Fortune 1000 companies entering, and the development from average individuals, blockchain is taking off. Nevertheless, these same entities have been wrong in the past so someone can believe that it will happen again.
Now, if you are a person who believes that blockchain has the potential to duplicate, it not surpass, the impact that the Internet did, then you can sleep well at night. You foray into cryptocurrency has a very good chance of rewarding you.
To give you an idea of what is possible, here are some numbers that came out of an article I read earlier today.
While all of these measurements are not exact counts of users, I would approximate the total users of cryptocurrencies to be between 20M-30M people in total worldwide.
20M-30M people out of 7B are involved in cryptocurrency according this this analysis. Even if he is wrong by a factor of 1/2, that means there are less than 60M people involved. Let us even provide a wider margin of error and double that to 120M. What is the potential if the entire cryptocurrency space is 120M people?
Do you think it is too late?
The closest comparison of the path of this technology is the Internet. Using a variety of metrics, we can establish roughly where we are.
If we zoom into 1990–1995 for the internet compared to 2013–2018 in cryptocurrencies:
So where does this put us?
If we are using this parameter as a comparison, cryptocurrency is right where the Internet was in 1994.
Just to provide some contrast, Google was not started until 1998.
I am writing this a day after Bill Gates and Charlie Munger slammed cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular. I will not even go into Munger's comments since it is completely absurd to compare Bitcoin to organ harvesting.
As for Gates, he said he would short it if he could. This is an interesting change in his view from a few years ago.
Naturally, people can change their mind or still believe in something while also feeling it is overpriced.
Nevertheless, many point to what these very wealthy people who have a great deal of knowledge are saying. Let us be honest, Gates is one of the technological titans of the last 30 years. He is not a guy who is foolish.
That said, do not take his word as gospel. It is amazing want some pretty smart people think.
Look at what was said about the Internet.
"I don't know who these zone-heads are," scoffs Charles Wang, the founder and chief executive of Computer Associates, a U.S. software company. "There were only a few hundred million dollars done in transactions in the Internet last year. If it is taking over, that is a pretty small number.
"Put newspapers and magazines out of business? It will never happen," Mr. Wang continues. "I like to read The Sunday [New York] Times, because I don't know what I want to read. The Web is there if you know exactly what you want.
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"People say the Internet will replace stores. It will never happen. If you know what you want to buy it is another vehicle. But shopping is a social experience."
Thanks Charles. Now please explain to me how Jeff Bezos is worth over $100B if the Internet is not going to replace stores.
Even Bill Gates, the founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp. and widely regarded as the crown prince of the World Wide Web, was taken unawares by the Internet's grassroots acceptance.
In his book, "The Road Ahead" (not available on-line), Mr. Gates admitted that he believed the technology for "killer applications" was inadequate to lure consumers to the Internet.
Ole Bill certainly missed that one.
It is easy to be right in hindsight which neither of these individuals had at the time of making these statements. The main lesson is to not to take what they say as truth just because of who is saying it. Guys like Bill Gates can miss by a wide margin.
Do you believe blockchain is going to have a substantial impact upon the world or won't it?
If you answered yes, then what are you worried about?
There are most likely under 50M people in the world using cryptocurrency. That means we are going to see billions more joining the party over the next 5-10 years.
We are circa 1994 for the Internet in terms of the adoption and development. That is 4 years before Google, 10 years before Facebook, and 13 years before the IPhone.
As for Hive, this ought to make everyone feel a lot more comfortable. Hive is one of the best blockchains from a technical standpoint. That means all the new traffic is going to need a place to go. Being on a blockchain that is only using .1% of its total capacity puts it in a great position. As we all know, while Bitcoin and Ethereum are trying to figure out how to scale up, Hive is working on other solutions. It is a nice place to be in.
I will close with a warning. Obviously there will be a lot of tokens which end up as nothing. I am not saying to blindly just throw money at stuff. There are scams, underfunded projects, and people in over their heads. However, if one researches and gets involved with quality blockchains that have real world solutions, there is a lot of room for growth.
There are still more people in the state of California than who are involved in cryptocurrency.
To me that means there is high growth potential.
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