Keep This in Mind When Investing in Cryptocurrency

Keep this in mind when investing in cryptocurrencies, this goes for me too.

According to this Bitcoin wallet explorer, there are just over 5 million BTC wallets in existence, that have over $100 USD in them. https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html Bearing in mind many people will split their coins over multiple wallets so this number is actually higher than it should be.

5 million. That’s nothing. My small YouTube channel, in the grand scheme of things, has more lifetime views than that. Just 2 million over $1,000. And I’m aware most Americans according to recent studies have less than $1000 in savings, but this is worldwide statistics here. This is crazy low.

This is both good news and bad news. The bad news is we are super far away from mainstream adoption. https://qz.com/1348825/starbucks-is-not-accepting-bitcoin-but-it-is-getting-into-crypto/ Damn you Starbucks.
The good news is, we are super far away from mainstream adoption. If you’re of the opinion that more adoption equals higher Bitcoin price then you are still super early to the table with the potential of big gains in the coming years. If you’re just wanting to use Bitcoin as a currency everywhere, well you can use TenX or Monaco or something.

Speaking of, TenX has no ETA on new cards, and according to the Monaco app, I am 85940th in the queue. That’s not nice. Eyes squint.

It’s true that there is a lot of mainstream potential being built around Bitcoin in particular, and when things do finally take-off I think it will go quickly. Quite like how suddenly everyone had an iPhone overnight.

But I think it’s unfair to have huge expectations on crypto right now. I know it’s easy to get caught up in the clouds with statements like Ethereum will be the new internet, web 3.0 and every company needs to get on the blockchain or they will go under. Or even more immediate expectations like Bitcoin taking a large slice of the gold market cap as a more convenient digital version of gold. Or moon time come a hopeful ETF approval.

5 million users is nothing. No wonder things are so volatile. A few years ago 20% swings in a day were more common. Things have improved since then for sure, but still early days, still very small. Maybe we all just need to calm down a bit. There are more users of a puzzle game on the app store called word link. Not sponsored btw lol. I think if we are more aware of this fact it may change the way we think about things.

Alt coins in particular. Outside of the top 10-15 or so, most of them have zero usage. They are currently simply in existence to be traded for Bitcoin. Which is a fine use case, but a lot of them aren’t honest about that current reality. Announcements of announcements for price manipulation, partnerships are either hyped up and put out of context, or fake entirely. It bugs me, I don’t like that. But there’s a market for it. Just a super speculative one.

Yeah they may have a big company as a “partner”, but what financial aid is that company providing? What use cases are they actually working on? Usually it’s super vague because they don’t even know themselves.

2017 was the year Bitcoin hit the mainstream, in name recognition. Everyone has now heard of Bitcoin. I’ve always maintained this, Bitcoin is no where near mainstream in actual current usage. Almost everyone I’ve ever spoken to about cryptocurrency, outside of meetups with you guys, has heard of Bitcoin, but owns none.

If the community thinks crypto is a failed experiment, they’re just being impatient.