On why BTC is all about faith

Let me share my view on crypto (and it's not necessarily negative, I've invested quite a lot myself).

If you watch Youtubers about crypto (& I don't mean Bitconnect-like crap), part of them debate about technical aspects, others produce what looks more like motivational videos (granted, I only judge from english-speaking ones, while the market is mostly asian, but still).

I don't think the technical part matters. At least, not that much, & not anymore.

As a programmer I do believe in the blockchain, but probably not as much as everyone. I do think it does make sense for some things. A decentralized casino or an exchange, yes. A decentralized currency, yes, but only for some parts of the world, & some people. Decentralized gold, yes. I don't think it's THAT revolutionnary, though. I don't think that it will change your daily life. Many concepts that are imagined running on a blockchain, don't really need to. They CAN, but that wouldn't change anything. It's often "mmh what can we do on the blockchain, would that work? Why not?". CryptoKitties? Just give me ONE reason for that to need to run on a blockchain. It's just a fun Rube Goldberg machine. Yeah, perhaps in 10 years you will still have your kitty on the blockchain, but they will be long forgotten. And that's if you can still access it, because the front-end is centralized & may not exist anymore.

Which brings me to the value. Of everything in the crypto world, and thus (well, for now), to the value of the BTC, since it's the mother of all values.

I think it (BTC) is now all about trust, it's gold in its infancy, and nothing else.
I think it WAS about technology. What boosted BTC drastically? Silk Road. That was the spark that it needed. Here, technology mattered. BTC isn't very tracable, quite useful to hide money. And I think it still has that value, for many people, not necessarily big criminals, also the average Joe who has some money to hide. Except BTC is far from the best as for anonymity, something to keep in mind as well.

Last month was the second phase: bringing the mass. Here the technology doesn't matter anymore. Money-making is the main, and I'd even say only appeal. And the trust that was required for them to arrive, was there (didn't last for long, who knows when it's gonna come back).
XRP was brought up to second place for a moment, and it's not even decentralized, proof that no one cares about technology. You just make some tweets with "banks" in them and there, you gain trust, & thus money.

The rest is all faith, and just that. LOTS of motivational posts and replies in this forum, for example. Someone makes a FUD-sounding post, most of the replies will sound like "BTC to 50k(/100k/insert your fav price here) end of <some month>", with absolutely nothing to back it up. It's all motivational answers & speeches.

Which does NOT mean it's bad. Because that's all what gold in its infancy needs.
Gold doesn't have much value. I mean yes it's rare, that's its most important value. It has uses but its fiat value isn't based on that.

Say someone approaches you on the street and says "I'm starting new gold, do you wanna put 1 buck on it"? You won't put a single cent on it.
A year later he comes back and says "that new gold I had started last year, it now has 5000 backsters. Do you wanna put 1 buck on it? Oh, and the government won't know about it, no taxation!". You still won't put a cent on it (well, some will).
Next year, he comes back, "you remember that new gold I had started? I now have 100k backsters. Do you wanna put a buck on it?". This time perhaps yes, you will put 1 buck on it.
Next year, "I now have 200k backsters. And that buck you put on it, now it's worth 2 bucks". Starts to look interesting, this time you may put 10 bucks on it!
Then you know the story, some time later your 10 bucks are worth 2 because 100k people have left the boat. Perhaps you will leave, or stay. Etc.
Repeat until 2 possible conclusions:

1) the boat is now filled with 500 million people. It's now impossible to sink it. If 100k leave it, it won't change much to the price. And pretty much nothing can make them all leave at once, anymore. There, that initial little shady investment succeeded at becoming gold. It's there and it's there to stay, or possibly very slowly fade away, but it's strong.

2) the boat has sunk. Why? Too many left, or they moved to another, shinier boat. And please don't correlate the price to the amount of people in the boat. What happened 2 months ago? A massive amount of new people bought BTC. What happened yesterday? A massive amount of those people have sold, and *much less* people have bought the dip. You now have less people in the crypto world, but they have more coins now. Well it has worked this way for quite some time, the money drops from the hands of the many weaks to a few strong hands. So even if the price went back up a little, don't think that so many have joined back. And less investors with more money isn't really what you're looking for if you want this to gain the mass adoption it needs.

The ONLY bit of technology in this story is tax evasion. The rest is all faith, trust, confidence.

So when you put your money in BTC (& I did!), just remember:
-it may succeed, but don't think it's about technology (plus, BTC is v1 of crypto, v1 is always the worst until it gets rewritten). Your (self-)motivational speeches won't change anything to it (or well they will, if people buy them).

-BTC<>crypto. Investing "in the crypto world" doesn't mean "investing in BTC". Crypto is there to stay, but to "invest in crypto", you need to invest in quite some things. Had you picked your favs before the bubble, and it wasn't Amazon, you got fucked.
Also, some ICOs, while initially too based on trust (well, you expect the company to do the job. It's pretty much Kickstarter), have less risky plans than just "possibly becoming gold, or a currency". Some will end up as real businesses, like online gambling, card trading, whatever, with real uses of token & thus better garantees of prices increasing. Or some have buy-back plans. Didn't I just say the technical part didn't matter? Well it eventually will, for those. Just not for virtual-gold/virtual-currencies, many competitors, maybe just 1 or 2 will stay (& yeah maybe it will be BTC).

And well, don't forget that your fiat is too purely based on trust. And somewhat manipulation, but.. still much less than in the crypto world. Yeah I know something decentralized should be less prone to manipulation, but well, it's quite obviously pump&dump everywhere (because in its infancy).

Also keep in mind that you don't need your gold-like values to actually BE currencies. It'd be plainly stupid to buy something online straight with crypto (unless, again, it's money you wanna hide). You will use frontends like Paypal, those will take a fee, but will protect you. The general public values protection over anonymity, they wanna have someone to talk to if they didn't receive their goods, have sent 10x the amount by mistake, or got fraudulous transactions made on their account. People DO want their name on their money. Not the minority of libertarians, but normal people who wanna live normal lives. Things like Paypal will most likely end up feeding on your <whatever crypto wins> account, just like it already transparently does using your bank account or your VISA. So yeah, keep in mind that the only form of "zero-fee" transaction possible (& I do believe it's possible, fully zero-fee, not with BTC but with systems where it's people who verify transactions at the same time as they make one, instead of miners who want rewards), means zero protection/insurance. Protection has a cost.