Last night I wasn't able to sleep, so I clicked around in the WWW to get some inspiration, without too much effort. I read through some mainstream articles about crypto and read through my facebook accounts notifications. Somehow I missed 200 messages and 1784 status updates. Although... "missed" is the wrong word. I missed nothing...
Just as a sidenote: Quality there is even worse than on the Steem blockchain. So please stop complaining.
I stumbled upon several discussions and articles about bitcoin and shitcoins and crypto in general and I was astonished how few people really KNOW anything about the matter. I felt very much like a nerd, even if I myself have no real clue about all the things that are going on.
"Bubble" is the most used word in the articles I found, in my facebook feed and everywhere else...
Even in private discussions, the most regular response I get is:
Ahhh... crypto. That's Bitcoin, ain't it? A big bubble!! I won't invest there if I where you!
It's feeling like coming out of an echo chamber. So I had to do some digging, at least to get together some of the relevant facts.
The total of the whole cryptomarket at the moment (according to coinmarketcap) is roughly at 380 000 000 000 $. True that is a lot of zeros and apparently quite a bunch of money.
Only a few years (or only a year ago) there was much less money in the cryptomarket. Some rough numbers:
- 2013 total worth of crypto 1 000 000 000 $ (one billion OR about what steem alone is "worth" today)
- 2014 total worth of crypto 6 000 000 000 $
- 2015 total worth of crypto 4 000 000 000 $
- 2017 (April) 25 billion $
- 2017 (December) 650 billion $
- 2018 (January 7th ) 813 billion $ at its peak so far.
Keynes would speak of a bubble and wait for the crash
At the moment, with a total worth of near 400 billion, the whole cryptomarket is worth about half as much as each of these: Amazon ( near 800 billion ), google ( Alphabet is worth near 800 billion), apple (near 900 billion) or about as much worth as facebook ( around 540 billion $ ).
If we look closer at facebook, we see 2013 a total marketcap of about 60 billion. This was after they joined the stock market. Facebook grew from 0 to 800 000 members from 2004 to 2011. Almost noone really speaks of a bubble in that context...
This one is even better (although slightly outdated )
From this perspective, there is still a lot of space for mooning (pun intended). If McAfee is right about BTC replacing gold as a long term investment and value storage, we are ahead of big times. Even if BTC becomes only a fraction of that role, cryptos are still far away from being "a bubble".
Are there dangers and volatility? YES
Are there shitcoins worth exactly ZERO? YES
Will it be BTC? Possibly not.
If we look at it from yet another perspective (the most interesting in my opinion) there is even more!
If we look at blockchain technologie as a gamechanging event like the invention of the printing press, the steem enginge, electricity or the internet, then EVERYTHING changes. I don't think that this is a very wide stretch, if we only look at the countless usecases only the steem blockchain can cover. Let't talk about a fraction or even a replacement of traditional banking...
For the moment there is only a very small number of people invested in Bitcoin (probably less than 1%). For ALT-coins this number is even much smaller (like about 0.1 % or less) compared to about 10% of the worlds population invested in stocks. (at least these numbers apply in the western world. probably these numbers are much lower for the rest of the world)
If we agree that crypto is a bubble...
Then his is the graph usually used to do so:
Let's look at if for a second:
sure this red line can almost be put anywhere.
Here is my question:
With so few people still using it, so insanely widespread possibilities, isn't it wise to assume crypto being a disruptive innovation instead of a bubble? The only way this "bubble" could burst, is by regulation, which several times has led to similar events.
I wouldn't advise anybody to invest all their assets into crypto, still I'll call anybody stupid, who has not at least some coins in a wallet. If you understood that, we possibly can start to talk about freedom.
Everything is subjectively worth exactly as much as you are willing to pay for it!
THX for reading
