Remembering the DotCom Boom : Part 2 – Here Come The Wolves
I vaguely remember it was around 1998-9 and the DotCom boom was well and truly getting crazy. All manner of companies were launching IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and some with little more substance inside them than a flaky idea and a www.something.COM web address. They were bringing in millions of dollars as the Gold Rush of the Internet boom had almost reached its crescendo.
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I was busy running my own little Internet Business on the coalface and around this time business was booming. I was taking on so many new clients at one point I was growing by 10% a week and I was still working 7 days a week trying to stay on top of it. I thought the boom would never end. Technology was moving fast too and it was around this time I needed to make a significant network and server infrastructure upgrade. There was a lot of buzz around about the possibility of businesses making sales online and "eCommerce" was one of the big buzzwords at the time. It was around this time that eBay went public, but just like the Crypto market today – it’s hard to pick the one that’s going to be the long term winner....
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Anyone who has seen the movie The Wolf of Wall Street will know what I mean when I talk about the Wolves. I was still young and naïve and so busy with my own business I didn’t have time to do enough diligence on any investments and when I got cold called at the shop by a smooth talking Wolf (just like in the movie) to talk to me about a new IPO called NetCommerce, it sounded really good to me. I got a nice shiny Prospectus sent out and it looked full of potential to my young eyes, though in hindsight it was probably mostly marketing. This particular Wolf wanted to get me in for $50K but I was near fully invested in my own business and could only scrape up $6K. “That’ll have to do” he told me.
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NetCommerce tanked in the bust. I think it might have started bleeding even before the bust because I remember being fairly disappointed almost immediately. News from that far back can be hard to find, but I dug up a report from 2003 which I will directly quote here :-
For the last two years NetCommerce, Inc., listed on the pink sheets (NEET.PK), has been a dormant company and the stock has decreased to zero.
Anyway, this was my first real and hard (and expensive) lesson about getting caught up in the Mania cycle of a boom and not doing enough diligence on what was a significant investment for me at the time. A lesson that has got me a bit more cautious and conservative with investments in this Crypto space. Again there are massive similarities between then and now. The Wolves are still out there. Instead of IPOs we have ICOs. Instead of Prospectuses we have WhitePapers (sometimes), but the same Mania, FOMO and Marketing bullshit tricks are there and they are getting better. People are being taken in and taken advantage of in this Crypto Boom just like they were in the DotCom Boom. It’s never been more important to do your own diligence.
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I did finally walk away with almost nothing after the bust and while these were expensive lessons, they were invaluable ones. It hurt a lot at the time, but I eventually forgave my younger self because those hard life lessons made me the person I am today. Maybe I am a bit more cynical and distrusting, but I’ve learnt from personal experience that it’s better to be that way when it comes to investing. There is no better school to learn from than the school of hard knocks.
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Tough life lesson for sure, but one that will help you grow and hopefully make better decisions in the future. A lot of these ICo's and coins in general are just trash, but the capital coming in and the way the slow release of funds works aloows them a bit of time to hide the fact tthat there is nothing more than just an idea behind something. Seems like new coins are coming out on the daily, it can be tough to sift through all the dirt to find a gem sometimes. I like the idea of buying a little more steem each time there is a dip, buidling that account, plus the passive return is great.
I have definitely made some better decisions since then, but I still make a fair chunk of mistakes too :)
I bought a few alt-coins that turned out to be trash, not because they were based on bad ideas but because of bad execution/implementation. STEEM might be one of those, LOL :)
I got taken for $5K around then. Some water filtration technique patent thing, hydrotech. I didn't do my own investigations (there was nothing useful on the net back in 96), because investor friends had dropped in $60K themselves.
I guess I thought they knew what they were doing.
All a long time ago now though.
What are we thinking about this current dump?
I'm thinking when the money flows back in, it'll flow back into alts more strongly than into bitcoin.
I've been bagging Bitcoin for a long while now, but this whole 51% attack trend is going to hurt those smaller alt coins still using PoW. My personal view is that PoW is likely to die off because the biggest is strongest....but it's not the best.
I'm looking at the DApps space because whoever emerges there with the best solution deserves to be #1 and I hope that's going to be EOS :)
Cheaper than a degree, and you probably learn't more.
I remember at that time a kid at school bought a Lambourghini. He invested in some computer graphics companies. I was jealous.
This specific investment instance, yes. Not sure about the whole 6 years of my life though....maybe :)
I guess that Lambos have stood the test of time. I don't remember people talking about Lambo Stocks back in the DotCom Boom, but as I was on the coalface I just may not have seen it.
Maybe you should have bought Lambo stocks back then. You might be mega rich now! Although there was 2008.
Yes, I think that is my point about being on the coalface for the DotCom Boom. I understood how the sharemarket worked, but I didn't understand finance, how the business cycle worked, nor the psychology behind it so I was unable to really capitalise on the vision. I was too focused on the Labor and not Capital side of the revolution.
Lesson learnt ;)
Same. I like to think I'm better prepared for the next one.
This does feel very similar. I have a feeling cryptos will bust and then the rest of the economy will bust. I'm bullish on Steem though.
STEEM has problems. But hopefully one of the big ones will be flushed out shortly....
? I haven't noticed too many problems other than Steem being undervalued and the ipfs not working very well for Dtube and Dlive.
I guess the good thing about not having any money is you can't lose it all at once. The bad thing about not having any money is you have a harder time taking advantage of any legitimate offering or business. So, at the time, I might have saved some pain and anguish by not being able to do much with the internet boom, but on the bright side, I didn't lose anything in the bust.
I guess it all depends on which side of the fence we choose to look from. In your case, you lost money but gained valuable life lessons that have served you well since. Could you have learned them another way? Maybe. Perhaps less painfully, too, but then, would you have really learned the lessons?
Obviously, any of that is pure speculation, but it is good to reflect on where we've been and where that's taking us. And I'm glad you're able to keep going, keep taking risks, keep figuring things out. It's better than just giving up or letting life run you over.
Yes, I would be a totally different person if I had not lived through this. So from a philosophical angle it's quite difficult to imagine what that different person might be like.
Anyway, I have come to terms with it and it's part of who I am now, so in a weird way I am kind of glad. They are scars I can be proud of. My heart was in the right place and I made a lot of mistakes, but I'm stronger and wiser for it :)
Man, that sucks! Sorry to hear you lost so much money. It seems like you've done fairly well in moving on, but that had to have stung a lot. It's tough seeing hard-earned money go down the drain. But you seem to be thinking on the positive side, and maybe without that lesson you could have gotten taken for a lot more in this ICO craze that's happening.
Thanks for the reminder to do our due diligence before making decisions. And not to give in to Fear of Missing Out.
It did take me years to get past it, but I eventually did and in time to take part in this new exciting crypto revolution. This current bloodbath in the markets has given me a bit of deja-vu but I'm still carrying enough optimism to HODL through it hopefully :)
Again, really sorry that happened to you, but I'm glad you were able to move past it. The crypto world is still developing, so I think it will go back up too, but it's still scary while it's down so much.
Go Connect was my dot com folly. I was a student at the time, so only wasted $2k on it. Investing lessons are valuable, and you learn from the good and the bad stocks.
Yep, it seems that anyone who is old enough has one of these stories to tell. I have made plenty of bad investments since then, but this one sticks in the craw because of the way it was pitched.
This is exactly similar senerio that we are now facing in the crypto market burst, ever since last year during the massive boom of the crypto markets all sorts of crypto currencies started issuing ICO to raise fund and become part of the mainstream cryptos without any basic fundamentals, and some where scamming the masses with fake ICO offers. The crypto market is now redressing to its normal state, so people needs to understand that @buggedout
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