2017 has been an incredible year. If you talk to people these days on the streets and ask them, if they heard about blockchain, bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, in most cases you will get yes as an answer. Opinions, well, are drifting apart from each other as far as you can imagine. For some it is pure hype and speculation, a bubble with no intrinsic value, for others the trend is a first sign of a global revolution, where people finally could reach independency and freedom.

Lets take a look at the numbers:

On January, 1st, 2017, bitcoin has been traded for around 980 $US. On December, 31st, 2017, one year later, the price for one bitcoin was averagely 13.500 $US. The peak price during 2017, on December, 17th, was 20.052,60 $US, which means a more than 20x price development.

The overall market capitalization of cryptocurrencies wrote somehow the same story. Whereas on January, 1st, 2017, market cap has been sitting at 17,85 billion dollar (all cryptocurrencies), we are now at around 830 billion $US, straight heading for the big even of 1 trillion $US.

If the phenomenon „cryptocurrencies“ has become one thing in 2017, 9 years after its birth with the release of the bitcoin white paper, then thats: unignorable.
And thats not only in respect of investment opportunities or in the financial sector. Public, decentralized currencies have become a political topic. Large institutions of the „old money“ are getting aware of it and observing it very closely. Leaders in the industry give statements, discussing the topic in public and, in some cases, you can see slight hints of concerns in their eyes. They, such as Jamie Simon, CEO of Goldman Sachs who called bitcoin a fraud, are mostly discrediting it, or even fight against it, like the Chinese government, who banned all exchanges in the peoples republic.

So, the question is: Why has this become so serious?

Well, as already mentioned, a decentralized, public currency has a statement. By law, currencies are issued by institutions, such as central banks or the governments themselves. They have control over it and can influence supply and, along with that, value. Now there come currencies, issued by the people itself, non-controlled (decentralized), simply valued by supply and demand. This means nothing less than trust is shifting over from the old system to a new one. And the new one stands for freedom. Now you, fellow reader, may wonder, why I am using these colourful terms to describe that situation. Aren’t we free? Can’t we do whatever we want? We are living in times of democracy, where people have the power, don’t we?

If these questions pop up in your head, I kindly want to ask you to go into yourself and to think about the current political situations, national and global, about your daily live, the past years and if things may have gone better or worse. If you take a closer look on where and how governments, politics, money and laws influenced you and your life, you might realize, that their impact has been larger than you actually have been aware of.

We are not as free as we thought and people are realizing that slowly.

Where are we now?

As mentioned in the beginning, we had an incredible run-up over the past year. Currently, market cap and with it, many currencies are surging to all-time highs almost daily. And with that, a problem has been risen as well: Pure greed. People see others becoming millionaires within very short investment periods, making thousands of percents of gains within weeks has become the new normal. There are ICOs, who collect millions within minutes and currencies, whose market cap sits at a multi billion dollar evaluation. All these with no product, but pure hype. Thats, let’s be honest, is dangerous. Most projects in the space are selling themselves with a promise and money is thrown at them like crazy out of simple speculation. Of course, there are also projects, who actually really developing great visionary products and actually building up whole decentralized ecosystems, which brings the whole idea way further.

What will the future bring?

It is very likely, that the majority of coins and token projects will die and fail and, with it, which is the dangerous part, the trust in the market, the support for a revolutionary idea could die too. Because one important circumstance can not be ignored: Most people, lets call them investors, are not professional, which means they act very emotional, not following proven rules of investing, but being driven by greed and fear. As every currency, its value grows and falls with the acceptance and believe of the people using it. And that is what we all should be always aware of. There is no intrinsic value. It never was and it never will be. We, the „people of crypto“ are keeping a great idea alive, just with our believe. Please keep that in mind in times, when markets are dropping and losses are being made. When the next government is trying to regulate or even shut down whole markets.

In addition, besides the emotional strength of the investors, the often overrated projects and coins now need to deliver their promises. Will they be able to build whole ecosystems? To bank the unbanked? To deliver a reliable, fast and cheap payment system? All this we will see in 2018. The moment of truth, if these projects are worth billions of dollars, will come earlier than most of them would wish for. But, all in all, 2018 will be a very positive year. We are still, and will be still in the next months, in the situation, where more and more new people are trying to squeeze into the market, hopefully not too fast.

I wish everybody a healthy and successful year 2018. Invest carefully and rational.