I began my cryptoasset journey in Aug, 2017. Thus, my opinions and perspective are likely that of an adolescent. The education in this area has been, as of recently, harsh and unforgiving. That being said, I have joined the HODler crowd and have weathered a few category 1-2 hurricanes in the past few months. Some were quite scary, like the BCash hostile takeover attempt (category 2 imo), and all of the FUD leading up to the non-issue of SegWit2x (potential for cat 4 but thankfully averted). The Bgold fork (tropical depression) was much milder in my opinion and I was happy to see that my pre-fork research was consistent with the actual post-fork result (ie nothing to worry about).

Despite those events being concerning, I could console myself because I could point to events or happenings that stood under, and were correlated with, the price action. Things could be rationalized by even a novice as myself.

Which brings me to the current situation of increased volatility and undiscernible price action. The market has become significantly more complex, and the devils that I am unaware of (being an investor newbie) have multiplied to the nth degree. I suspect these new players are surpassingly wealthy and influential, and their ability to control both the upside and downside of this relatively small market is simple child's play to them. Unclear to me what their overall intentions are. I suppose if they wished to kill this whole experiment (at the behest of their governmental/bureaucratic overlords) BTC would be dead or near dead already. Perhaps they are priming the market with low prices in preparation for a large bull run in 2018. That is my hope, of course, but its uncomfortable to be clinging to hope in the face of a potential category 5 nation-killer staring you in the face.

So, I feel like I am getting played. It's harder to make sense of what's going on and I suppose it will only get harder to rationalize from here.

This saddens my naive brain, thinking that we finally had a "free" market in cryptoassets where the laws of supply and demand rule the day. Of course, the whales have as much a right to be "free" with their money and influence, so I suppose the market IS truly free. And isn't this what I, as a libertarian, wanted in the first place: an unregulated space where great ideas and equally impressive technology can be backed by venture capitalists and Joe Six-packs alike with no preference or prejudice. Where the cream will rise to the top because of the virtue of the idea and not by the backroom dealings of the elite.

A different youtube crypto pundit recently posted an interesting article:

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/john-pfeffer/An+Investor%27s+Take+on+Cryptoassets+v6.pdf

Given the endless philosophical debates concerning what BTC should be (store of wealth vs payment rail vs unit of account), the author makes a fairly convincing argument that the store of wealth characteristic of BTC is its strongest attribute from an investor's perspective. Additionally, he also astutely points out that having a strong payment method, although useful and welcomed, is merely added value on top of a more critical foundational store of value. He observes that, in our current milieu, there are MANY ways we transact daily. To quote the author directly:

"Now think about how many different payment rails you’ve used over the past month: physical cash (perhaps in multiple currencies), Visa, Amex, PayPal, direct debit, SWIFT, etc. They were all good and reasonably fit for purpose in slightly different ways and possessing slightly different features for the specific payment you were making: cash to tip the porter, Visa to pay on Amazon, Amex to buy a plane ticket and get the points, PayPal to pay on that dodgy website you don’t trust with your card number, direct debit to pay your utilities bill, SWIFT for an international transfer and so on."

Likely, the future crypto world will also be fragmented when it comes to payment methods. What is required is the underlying store of value, analogous to the role that fiat currency and, ultimately gold, fills today. Of course, of all the cryptoassets available today, BTC fills that role most robustly and reliably. It's simple use case is being fulfilled at the current time, albeit in a very stomach-churning fashion, but perhaps that is simply a function of time and change in mindset. Another appropriate quote from the author:

"We should pause here to think about how long the emergence of a cryptoasset as a dominant monetary store of value might take. On the one hand, gold’s been around for millennia, so the mental paradigm shift required might take longer than 10 years and never occur fully. On the other hand, we rode horses for transportation for millennia and moved on from that pretty quickly and categorically with the advent of the superior technology of the motorcar. That transition required a major buildout of physical infrastructure while the one that interests us here requires little more than a shift in mindset."

For those of us old enough to remember, when was the last time you saw or used a payphone?

I was encouraged by this article and highly encourage you to check it out in its entirety. The author delves into the different sectors within the cryptoasset realm (EVM, dApps, currency) and performs an erudite analysis, at least from my laymen's perspective. Please punch holes in this analysis and comment on any fallacies/assumptions that are incorrect or controversial; contrarian views are definitely welcomed.