Besides it's fundamental potential the Factoid market also has a lot of room regarding all psychological aspects. And that is something I expect to "catch up", because there is a recognizable tendency that is positive. That's why I say in my long post that all signs I know of are on green.
I think a good metric for this psychological "catch up" is # of Reddit subscribers to /r/factom:
http://redditmetrics.com/r/factomClick on the "Total Subscribers" tab and it looks like past linear growth is giving way to something more exponential.
Yes, right! It's a good sign for increasing attention. Factom becomes more and more recognized but without coming close to a hype, so there is still a lot of room.
Attention is a very important factor (without any attention nothing would be possible), but I also mean more than "just" that when I speak of a "psychological market". It's just very hard to explain, because it's nothing objective and it's not possible to make statistics about it.
One example: Identification. The expression of Identification is something like "attached to"/"tied to". Psychologically it's kind of simple but hard to explain it's "mechanism". It's about something that is "new" that is connected to something that is already there. Maybe weird example: If somebody you don't know gives you a stone, you'll ask what's wrong with him and throw it away. If a woman you love gives it to you it's also still a stone, but it connects - because it stands for something that is meaningful for you. And to connect, to build up identification, it needs understanding.
In Crypto the highest intense identification is profit. But the identification is much deeper than just money. In the end, money stands for "perspective" or "chances" and "feeling safe", also for "power" and so on. It has deeper meaning than just the number of Bitcoins or the dollars in cash. But, there is an extreme conflict: While it stands for something that should last over a long time (nobody wants money and what it stands for just for some minutes) everybody wants it quick. And the Crypto-market is really extreme in that. It's about "i want much!" and "soon!". And that's the point where people believe to invest while they in fact just bet. They believe to invest because they believe that the Dev-teams develop value that will last. But they "invest" in projects that give short-term-signals. And if teams give short-term-signals it says something about their intentions. That makes the whole Crypto-market very paradox. Because what is green for longterm is red for short term and the other way around. If a Dev-team gives too many "buy-signals" for short-term, I consider all possibilities of dishonest actions of the team. Paycoin was a masterpiece-example. ;-)
And the identification with short-term-profit can not connect to Factom. They simply don't give those signals but counteract it. And Ethereum gives all signals. They give long-term-signals and they are long-term-focused. But especially the market itself is a short-term-signal and I believe it was manipulated and is manipulated, and I believe it's done very strategic. It's not the price why I believe it. It's the volume. But also the smart marketing of Ethereum for the Crypto-Public involves a lot of short-term-signals that are "build" on longterm-signals. That's a very effective combination because it gives additional trust.
Factom is different. They don't give those incentives and the market doesn't give those incentives. Some believe that good news like partnerships should be enough for a hype. But all partnerships were long-term-signals. Azure, Honduras, Smart Cities, etc. --> longterm. What was short-term? Chinese exchange: Yuanbao ---> first pump. The pump of march was a combination of pure manipulation and "Vitalik Buterin is invested in Factom!". It's a short-term-signal because the price itself was and VB is a "identification-figure". I can't be totally sure if that was the reason for the pump, but I don't know of any other reasons for that sharp rise. I even believe that it was very strategic. Enabled margin trading plus bot-army plus the Vitalik Buterin - hype. Until now there never was more volume in the Factoid-market and the price was on an ATH. And it had nothing to do with Factom.
But: Is there potential to be identified with Factom as an idea? Absolutely. It just needs understanding. Factom even has more potential I believe than Ethereum regarding that. The system itself can be very "binding" to customers. The idea behind that is beyond making business but meaningful in many ways. That means: There is a lot of potential and it's mainly a question of time for the "public" to grow into it. And there is a tendency, and that will most likely lead into a price hype, because at some point those aspects multiplicate with itself. One scenario for example is: More and more long-term-focused Investors invest and the price begins to rise. The price itself begins to act as short-term-signal and people try to find reasons. Not important if there are no real reasons. They find reasons. But if there should be real reasons, good news, they will take it even if those reasons should again be long-term-signals.
And especially: The more time passes by, the more the people will believe in "soon". With other words: Factom builds up suspense out of itself and a lot of aspects will act additionally and multiplicate with each other. The potential I believe to see in Factom as a project and it's idea is more powerful than anything else I know of (in this space). The same is true with focus on it's market. All what is on "red" for short-term-thinkers now, is not just green in my opinion. If I'm right with my prediction, it's a catapult.
And generally: I think blockchain tech/DLT is going through a bit of a "horseless carriage" phase. E-money is great and important, but I suspect some of the biggest markets will be built around tech that's not a new iteration of what's come before, but rather unique to—and dependent for its existence on—blockchain technology. So ... tech solutions like Factom. But it's just this actual "newness" that creates the lag in peoples' understanding and appreciation of what's going on. Everyone sort of understands "e-money," but AFAIK there aren't very good precedents for what Factom's attempting. Which means the price discovery process is very immature—i.e. the price is lagging the actual value. An annoyance to short-term investors, but a major boon to long-term investors like myself.
E-money can be very different things. It can be something like Paypal or something like Bitcoin. And if we speak about Bitcoin or at least the concept behind: cryptographically secured, decentralized, international etc., it's an offensive attack on the established system. And the idea is not underestimated by authorities. My impression is that nobody really knows how to handle it, but it's nothing politics and finance like. And they figured that the idea is very powerful, but it's a threat and I don't expect that it will be easy to become mainstream. I expect that they will fight it, but not in an offensive and obvious way. In worst case they regulate it to death and do bad marketing against it (terrorist-financing is one example). But at the same time: The ghost is out of the bottle and there are already potential Bitcoin-successors that will be harder to regulate. More anonymity, better decentralization and so on. It will be a fight behind the curtains, invisible for the majority of people.
And that is also something I really like about Factom. It's not that offensive regarding the established system. It's not that much of an attack. It's more like an offer, but if used --> it would change a lot. I can't know what Paul Snow exactly means with "honesty is subversive", but I believe it's about that aspect. It's not about replacing anything. It's more about changing from the inside out. And it's not just about a technical solution to solve existing technical problems. If used it can change thinking. Because a company that uses a recording system like Factom will have to think about what they do and how. For example: Banks usually have going on a lot of illegal activities that shouldn't come out and they have data and documents about it. If investigated they often destroy it. Happened multiple times and happens most likely every day in a lot of companies and institutions etc.. And if that (data was destroyed) comes out it's usual not to find out who was responsible, at least not provable. And Factom is not just a system that can potentially reveal dishonest activities. It's also about preventing because it changes thinking. If it's not that easy any more to get away with dishonest (and illegal) activities, the question is: Is it worth it?
And my concern in the beginning was: Who will want it? But Paul Snow is right when he says that it's not easy to say "I don't want it!", especially if the system gives additional incentives besides the honesty-aspect to use it. It can lower costs, it's about security, it has a lot of practical use and I don't know of real barriers (if high quality). And somebody who would say "no, better not!" - that's not easy to say, because it could be revealing regarding intentions not to want it - it could be about dishonest intentions. And nobody is open about dishonest intentions in front of honest intentions. Dishonesty always loses in such situations. And that's very powerful, but before people understand that potential they need to understand Factom beyond it's technology.
And I'm not a tech-guy. That was always my biggest weakness in this market. But I try hard to understand ideas and how they are designed into a system. And I believe Factom's design is more effective than Bitcoins or Ethereums. Some say, that because of the federated servers Factom wouldn't be really decentralized. But that could be very wrong because of the election-mechanism, the auditors and the "kick-bad-actours-out-mechanism". It gives additional security while at least theoretically Mining-farms could turn against Bitcoin and nobody could do anything against it. Some believe that Bitcoin-miners wouldn't have any intention to do that because for them it's about money and they wouldn't ever attack the source of money - Bitcoin. But that implicates that they mine for money while it's at least theoretically possible that for example some mining farms are already in the hand or even started from secret-service-agencies (governments). And while Bitcoin is already a battlefield because of human weaknesses and additionally in a fight with the established system, a system like Factom can easily be part of the established system while changing it .
Plus: Data is more meaningful than money - while money is basically data.
Under the line it will most likely be about the technical base of Factom. If it's possible to develop it in a way that is in line with the idea and the thoughtful design. If yes, I have no doubt if it will have success.
