Crypto market to exceed 1 trillion USD in 2018 (Opinion)

It is March of 2018; As of this writing, the price of a single Bitcoin is sitting roughly around $11 000 USD. In case you weren't paying attention that is down nearly 50% from it's all time high less than 3 months ago in December 2017. With such large price fluctuations and the fact almost all coins are down from the beginning of the year, it's easy to adopt a bear position – or further - assume the 'Bitcoin bubble' finally burst.

In some ways the bubble did burst, as the price was raised by massive speculation in late 2017, while the practical and applied use of Bitcoin simply wasn't there yet. Bitcoin, as a cryptocurrency, was a pioneer. It established a beachhead for other more superior technologies to emerge and eventually replace Bitcoin. As the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin was slow, energy hungry, and the fees were too high for it ever to reach it's full potential. It took Bitcoin getting to $20 000 for the world to realize the cryptocurrency era is here.

At the moment, the markets are taking a healthy consolidation period, before what crypto-enthusiasts have termed 'The Flippening' likely occurs. The Flippening is the foretold moment in 2018 where Bitcoin will loose its market lead and be dethroned by another more superior alt-coin. It might be Ethereum, It might be Nano, who knows what could happen at this point. One way or another it is almost certain that some other technology will very soon emerge as the market leader ahead of Bitcoin. When this happens I wouldn't be surprised if the markets explode again. They very nearly have to.

I am making this assumption based on the fact that globally speaking, still very few people own any considerable amount of cryptocurrency. Over the next few years massive numbers of people from around the world will be entering the crypto markets. From an investing point of view, it's a game of keeping up with all the latest technologies available. The crypto-sphere can change tremendously fast as we witnessed over the past three months. I'm not fully convinced any of the market leaders have what it takes to really become a globally usable currency.

One thing we can be almost certain, is that the markets will grow from here. It won't surprise me if the total crypto market cap exceeds 1 trillion easily before the year end. Sometimes you just have to sit tight and hodl on those coins!!