Snapshot taken, Bitcoin Cash birthed, and Bittrex retweets a Richie Lai tweet stating that "no decisions about BCC markets will be made until the chain proves viable", yet a few short hours later they decide to make a market in Bitcoin Cash anyway, while still being unviable and its wallet activation impossible. With trading limited strictly to funds already deposited on Bittrex, Bitcoin Cash proceeded to shoot up to a high of $1,470.00 over the course of the next 18 hours on total volume of around $90,000,000.00 - up to that time - making it the BTC market volume leader, and all the while the Bitcoin Cash wallet remained in “maintenance”.
Kraken announced during that same timeframe that it was likely that deposits and withdrawals wouldn't be available for days, yet they too opened trading, along with other, lesser well known exchanges.
The key question at that point - in my opinion - centered around the issue of “how could” and “why would” these exchanges begin trading if the network wasn’t functional, and, of course, who were the main actors involved.
It was obviously people who already had tons of BTC ready to go on Bittrex, and speculation had it that it was “China Billionaires and its banks”, as well as the possibility that Bittrex market makers also had a hand in things, and, not to be left out, there was also the establishment narrative ‘move on, there’s nothing to see here’ meme that it was all due to “noobs”.
Quite a show! A renegade fork of the world’s first and still foremost crytpocurrency, traded irresponsibly on several select exchanges before the forked coin’s network even became viable (as of this writing, the Bittrex wallet is still “under maintenance”). It’s the story of an utterly deplorable spectacle of wolves overtly and unabashedly fleecing the innocent that is happening center stage with the world’s most important and best known crypto (this ain’t some obscure shitcoin that we’re talking about) with mainstream media coverage taking it into everyone’s living room and severely damaging the whole of crypto. An ugly day in the life of crypto that shed a lot of light on just how unpalatable the space is for the vast majority of normal, honest, hard working people.
What can we do about this? How can we reverse this ugly, extremely myopic, systemic gaming of crypto and start projecting the opposite to the world?
I suggest the high road and staying completely clear of the fray so that there’s no chance of guilt by association or any other type of possible misunderstanding that maligns our good name. We already have the products and tools with which to radically change crypto’s reputation and we can do that by moving forward in the positive promoting both STEEM and BitShares as THE solutions – because they’re both solutions, the first from a community communication point of view, and the second from that of a legitimate, non-manipulated exchange where honest people can do honest buying and selling.
But what’s more, and this is key, they're also THE solutions from a storage of wealth and a means of exchange standpoint - who needs anything else if you’ve got STEEM or BTS? Your money is completely safe and you can send a payment of any sort to anybody anywhere in the world almost instantly. Why do we need any other cryptocurrency? To top things off, they're also thriving businesses! Thriving businesses held in the form of ultra liquid shares that are 100% safe and so easily transferable that they are also as good as, if not better than, cash! Businesses whose value will continue to increase, whose shares’ ownership are as well documented as traditional savings accounts and whose liquidity rivals that of cash! That's having your cake and eating it too! What more does anybody want? What more do we need? Who needs anything else?
I remember when working my way through college in the construction industry asking a contractor friend of mine if he was worried about the competition. His answer to me was: “I’m the competition”. I’ll never forget that, and it totally applies here: STEEM and BTS are the competition that everyone else will need to worry about, and ultimately imitate if they have any hopes at all to survive!
STEEM and BTS are the future of crypto, they are BTC’s replacement. With STEEM and BTS nobody will ever need BTC again (or BCC, or whatever the clone may be). STEEM and BTS bring integrity and confidence to crypto, will finally take it mainstream in a way the average person can understand and trust, and those first generation embarrassments will eventually become long lost memories.
The future of crypto is in our hands. It's a matter of investing in the solution and then taking it to the rest of the world.
I’m extremely clear on my personal roadmap: over the next 6 months or so I plan to execute a slow, intelligent liquidation into strength of all my Altcoins and combine that with a slow, intelligent move into STEEM and BTS . . . and most likely EOS too. 😉
I encourage all like minded thinkers to do the same.
Full Disclosure: My “portfolio” of crypto is currently made up of roughly 15% STEEM, 15% BTS, 45% LTC with the rest being an assortment of Alts. As a swing trader, I’m looking to take advantage of the next cyclical swing higher by raising cash, that, in turn, will be used to “load up” on STEEM and BTS on the following swing lower.