Bitcoin Forum

I have a philosophical or analogy question as it relates to the starting/adapting of the internet and crypto in general.

Looking back, generally, in the mid 1980s 'geeks' and early adaptors were into the internet.  The general public might have heard about it they did not use it, nor did they know the implications of it to change commerce and society.  It was not easy for them to access - needed a home computer and internet access.
At that time there were many there were many companies and technologies starting, many of which we can see in hindsight did not survive.  There were also many people pumping and dumping the stocks of those companies.

I can see similarities now with the mid 1980s.   But, now the public is just beginning to get involved with the easy access to exchanges like Robinhood and Coinbase.  Also, ETFs are starting outside the USA and applications submitted in the USA.  And, the pumping of some crypto is there too.

Am I correct with my thinking?  Crypto is about to take off?  Are we in the mid 1980s phase or are we in the mid 1990s or late 1990s. 

I currently have 8% of my invested assets in crypto.
BCH
BTC
ETH
Atom

Thanks in advance for your perspective.

Internet is a fundamental technology, it forever changed human communication. It allowed everyone to access tons of information for free, instantly and effortlessly. It connected people across the globe.

Crypto isn't as revolutionary. It allows you transact money without middleman, so you can have full control over your money and better privacy. But most people don't care about those things, so they don't rush to start using crypto. They already have access to online payments, and the inconveniences of using crypto are not worth it for them.

The internet eliminated numerous middlemen e.g. travel agents and continues to do so e.g. real estate agents

Crypto is eliminating middlemen e.g. China's crypto will eliminate Whats app payment, credit card payments.  And the concept is expanding.
https://www.coindesk.com/japan-to-have-blockchain-based-stock-exchange-in-2022

I think that crypto has already took off a long time ago and what is currently happening right now is the mid 1990s for bitcoin where nothing uneventful besides the occasional ATHs.

Maybe, maybe not. Though a lot of us here on Bitcointalk are betting that it will.

As for your picks, though I'm mostly into Bitcoin, I think some cryptocurrencies will gain real traction as well (when I say some, I mean like a very very small percentage of the current existing projects). It's just that picking the right ones will be really difficult to the point that it might be a gamble.

This is definitely NOT a philosophical question.You are making an oversimplified analogy.
The booming crypto industry has some similarities with the 80s and 90s early internet era,but comparing them is more or less pointless.You can't use cryptocurrencies without internet,so internet is the foundation,while the crypto industry is something like an extension of the internet.
The cryptocurrency price explosion kinda looks similar to the dotcom bubble in the late 90s/early 00s,but I think that we are in a new phase,where more people are taking the crypto industry seriously and the legit crypto projects will get the attention of serious institutional investors.


 

The interest is definitely increasing but unfortunately just like the early days of any technology we are seeing a lot of vaporware and scams in the market too. For example the shitcoins you claim to be bag holding, namely BCH and ETH are two good examples of scam and vaporware respectively.
I expect the same hype and doom cycle in the altcoin world as the new people pour into the market and end up being encouraged to buy these shitcoins as the "better" options.

Charts show you have good profits but altcoin season will be corrected. Their total marketcap are too huge and they need corrections. Top altcoins will have long rallies and they will not stop or begin bearish after corrections.

Bitcoin will step behind and give the market for altcoins to show their growths. I have more belief in top and old altcoins but if you want to gamble, you can pick some big but new altcoins. They can give you bigger and faster profit than old altcoins but risks are higher.

How many percent the Bitcoin is in your portfolio?

I think technology is always changing for the better and helpful for humans. That is what always happens in human civilization where humans always try to create something better to help their work.

Internet technology gave a big change in the last decade of its birth. various things come and change very quickly, such as crypto technology which everyone can have easily now.

It is not impossible that some day crypto technology will disappear and be replaced by other technologies. I think we are just entering a few steps in the crypto world right now. I've known crypto since 2017, but now a lot has changed. and I think there will be more changes that will happen than now.

You cannot tell how much profit someone has made (if any at all) by looking at the charts. You have to know when they have made the investment and what they invested (fiat or bitcoin) in that shitcoin.
For example if OP had bought ETH back in 2017 with bitcoin, then he is in at least 60% loss today even though ETH is super pumped right now. But if he had invested fiat in ETH then he has increased his fiat by 146% but that also means that he didn't invest that fiat in bitcoin which means a profit of 146% instead of 650% which is another kind of loss.

Different time frames will result in different loss % but the long term altcoin investment will always result in a loss nonetheless. Short term trading altcoins on the other hand can result in a massive profit because they get pumped and dumped and if you can jump ship before the dump begins you will always make a good profit.

Creation of Eras
The advent of the internet changed the world and brought it to a whole new level and era. It transfered the validity of a thing from the usual hardware which is rather too bulky, occupies a lot if space and causes nuisance to the society once damaged to softwares which is rather invisible, doesn't occupies any space at all and yet very useful. The fact that, information could be stored in the clouds and accessed anywhere in the world at no cost at all but, just having an Internet enabled device made it more appreciated.

Operations
Stocks existed before this era and has been  around for years, fiat did too and its still in existing but its boom is relatively controlled haven't been around this long but then, cryptocurrency where as, bitcoin is barley 12years  of existence if we check back from 2009 till now . Its still got a long way to go and as a system  that operates on the clouds  in a blockchainn network, its nothing like the 1980s or 1990s.

Timing similarities
Though, the validity might be similar as gaining more from the market in bitcoin depends on few factors of which, the time you came into the system became active and the  strategy you build about that period matters. Like, you can compare the early bitcoin adopters of 2009-2014 with those of 2016-2021. There exist a fine difference as to  how uch you could accumulate at a definite price between them.
So also did the internet era affected business in those ways as, early adopters had more information channel and could reach people with demand for the products more easily than others.

How its not late for cryptos and investors
Again, its not too late for a bitcoin investment  as we can say it being yet to be accepted by the globe and the last bitcoin still to be mined implies, its still in its early stage. So, it pays to get on the trend early.

A truely decentralized cryptocurrency will definitely not end up controlled like internet.
There will be few that will remain decentralized as satoshi intended. The rest will likely disappear or fall to dictatorship and centralized powers.
So anyone who understands the true purpose of crypto will stick to it's good ideals/principles and avoid encouraging things that can turn it into Centralized Network/system.   Besides, we are building to escape dictatorships (and the evil that is coming soon ) not to embrace them

Cryptocurrency may be young or still starting up as you made your analysis but is not that it is actually. Crypto won't wait for anyone for its boom. In other on this, your 8% hodling is very small. Take a look at the price of bitcoin today to understand what percentage would be your gain if in next five years compared to 50% investment in cryptocurrency. It is a decentralised system and that is why it is having a fast move. Invest more now and be happy to enter the future.

Internet did much more than just eliminating some middlemen, it allowed many things that were not possible before. Online work, videostreaming, free learning resources, gaming, social networks, search enginges - all these things are built on top of the Internet.

Now, what's built on top of cryptocurrency? Tokens, NFTs, smart contracts barely have any uses in real life, it's mostly just a place for making money on speculation while there's hype.

The Internet and computer science have flourished. They have changed every aspect of life from rest, entertainment, spending money, work, communication ... all have the imprint of the internet.
Bitcoin was created by computer science (blockchain technology) and economic knowledge. Bitcoin was a milestone for the beginning of cryptocurrency in the world. Currently, the cryptocurrency market is booming and there are more practical applications from blockchain technology.
We've got data management, decentralized finance, art archives in NFT, people management ...
Cryptocurrencies are the trend, the future of the world economy.

Op, if we're talking purely about the revolutionary aspect, I think that Bitcoin is not as huge of a deal as the Internet was. However, being absolutely revolutionary is not the only thing that matters. For instance, the Internet was indeed something very new that became very popular, growing from 16 million users in 1995 to 5 billion users in 2020 (according to the only data I've found (https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm)). And since Bitcoin is already used by about 100-200 million people, it's indeed currently the same with BTC as it used to be with the Internet at the end of the 1990s. So Bitcoin has the potential to become a worldwide thing hypothetically. It's even more so if we consider that sometimes things which are way less revolutionary than computers or the Internet eventually reach billions of people. I'm referring to smartphones, which IMO are more comparable to BTC because they weren't such a huge improvement since mobile phones and tablets already existed, and yet billions of people (https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world) use them nowadays. So Bitcoin isn't extremely revolutionary, but maybe it doesn't have to be and can still become widely used.

Thanks for all the replies.  I've read them all.


https://[Suspicious link removed]/3nPjV5j

The above link will take you to a Yahoo chart of the NASDAQ from 1980 to 2003

My thinking is this.
In the 1980s and 1990s there were many companies that got hot and then when down e.g. Netscape, WANG

There are many fewer that started in the 1980s that survive to this day e.g. Apple, Microsoft, Intel

Crypto today is like the 1980s there are Alt coins that will get hot and decline not to be heard from again; Dogecoin?

There are Coins that are like Apple and MS.  They were in first and got adopted by communities.   Apple by high end users and early adaptors.  MS by businesses and the general public.

I see my investments as this:
BTC* - Microsoft - Great name recognition, easy to understand function
ETH* - Apple - adopted by Defi and other platforms

BCH* - The general public will see this as the poor man's bitcoin

Atom - Narrative easy to understand by those who write about crypto and the public - speculative.

*These coins will make up a large portion of ETFs

Where we are in the cycle?   I'd say we either just had the 1987 decline or it is before us.  But that does not mean much.   There is a huge rise to come.
https://news.bitcoin.com/hundreds-banks-us-customers-buy-sell-hold-bitcoin-existing-bank-accounts/

I'm guessing we will see many of the same things we saw in the run up to the Tech crash, shills pushing bad crypto, day trading will explode, great fortunes made and lost in crypto rise and fall.

There will be great discussions among the fundamentals and  momentum players. 

We won't know if I'm correct on any of this for quite some time.

Well, we are at 1990’s phase of bitcoin if we will use the analogy of the internet. We are about to take off and bitcoin is becoming more mature during the past year. In the 15th year of its existence, bitcoin will become mainstream. People already tried to start but did not survive during the past years. And now, cryptocurrency platforms are becoming more and more secure, effective, and efficient. People will start to adopt cryptocurrency and sooner or later --90% of the people who have smartphones will have their wallets ready ^{[5 - 10 years from now]}. Crypto exchanges will then become the banks that help the consumers to grow and save their money.

I disagree. Most people didn't care about internet when it was just talk about tcp/ip, modems or even http protocol. Connecting computer to another didn't seem revolutionary to most of the people. Some geeks saw the possibilities but only the applications from that network made it revolutionary.

"Crypto" isn't just transacting money and it doesn't matter if people care for now because the infrastructure isn't even ready. They didn't care about the internet when it came either. But people are building regulatory friendly applications, making actual use cases that could be a back bone for a network that doesn't need trust. Network that is backed by state of the art privacy tech cutting out ton of middle men.

So where did I find the question containing philosophy?

I don't see deep questions, maybe if analogy is more appropriate without associating philosophical arguments.

It is actually a lot like penny stocks. We have the big one on top called bitcoin (which is like the stocks whether Apple or Microsoft or ...) then we have thousands of useless small assets in a tiny market called penny stocks that have no real value and are only being pumped and dumped in a market called altcoin market instead of penny stocks.

That's ignoring the main characteristics of bitcoin!
The most important thing is that it is delivering what it promised which is a decentralized censorship resistance payment system with high security.
The fact that bitcoin has grown this much has nothing to do with name recognition or being easy to understand because it has neither. With the amount of FUD against bitcoin its name is sullied with a lot of lies and it is extremely difficult for most people to understand how it functions specially since it is different from any other currency they have ever used.

This is actually like the Tulip mania. There is a useless hype called "smart contracts" that so far had no real world applications in the past 6 years that ethereum has existed and it solves nothing. It also was not capable of delivering what it promised. It is both centralized and mutable.
On top of all that it has unlimited supply with a gigantic premine of 72 million.
For now it is being pumped for a couple of weeks maybe but there is no future for such a severely flawed design.

This is more like a centralized shitcoin that isn't good for anything other than short term pump and dumping.
It is also known as a scam coin specially since it had to scam people to force them into buying it. Like what bitcoin.com did when people went to that site clicked "buy bitcoin" gave their "bitcoin" address but they received bcash instead!

First let me say I am not knowledgeable enough about the technical applications of any coin.

However, your post is important because it shows the difference between a knowledgeable technical person and the common person like. me.

In the stock market you might be considered a fundamental analyst.  That is a person who reviews the income statement, balance sheet and market conditions for a particular stock.  I would be considered as momentum analyst.  I look at the price action and sociology of the stock buying public.

Technically everything you say could be absolutely true about the 'shit coins', I own.  However that does not mean that they will not survive in the long term.  Think about the debate between the computer IOS.  A lot of people say that 1980s the Apple IOS was better then the MS IOS for computers.  For example, Apple used less memory and was more intuitive.   Yet MS has a larger market share in computer IOS now.