So BTC transaction fees are down again. Coincidentally, the price is inching up again for the first time in what seems like bloody ages.

We've been here before, haven't we 🙄

Look, it's the same old story, the same old boom-and-bust cycle as again and again, the user base of our first great cryptocurrency crash face-first into the technological limitations of a pioneering -- but now sadly dead-end -- blockchain. Again and again, the price drops as more and more people sell it into fewer and fewer hands, letting the fees drop as fewer transactions happen. Again and again, a new wave of new money floods in (as well as old money buying the dip of course) and all rises once again.

NOPICTURES

_{rinse. repeat.}

However. There is a difference this time. That difference isn't a person or a place or a thing but a number:

2018

The level of seismic upheaval that is going to hit the crypto world this year is going to make 2017 and 2016 look like the mildest of waters, like veritable lakes of glass by comparison. People know now. Governments know now. Hedge funds and investment bankers know now. Random taxi drivers and waiters and Himalayan sherpas know now. Bitcoin is a vast whale-shadow that has breached the surface of the world consciousness and dragged the rest of the crypto in its wake.

The revelation has already happened, it's just unevenly distributed.

The shocks and reverberations of these effects are going to start making themselves felt very soon. The Flippening, long predicted by Ethereum enthusiasts, is already in progress as so many companies cease their support of bitcoin as a payment option but the joke is on them because ETH's blockchain will suffer the same creaking struggles that Bitcoin suffers as soon as enough people transition over. Then it'll be Dash's or Monero's or ZCash's turn for even less time each as more and more players learn the truth -- which is that all the big coins share that problem.

Of course, that won't matter because there are a thousand other coins and tokens waiting in the wings for that to happen. If we're really lucky, Steem will become the coin for those in the know and become the snowball of the cryptopocalypse.

That in turn won't matter because governments are bringing down the crushing fist of regulation in countries all over the world. Soon crypto will be tamed or forced into the margins; what happens when the citizenry chases it there is a mystery but it will be big.

Perhaps one possible case study with a happy ending is the unique case of South Korea. Did you know that despite having only 51 million people ...

_{incredible article on why south korea is so disproportionately influential on crypto -- seriously, read it!}

... that South Korea is responsible for 30% of all cryptocurrency trading worldwide?! I didn't until two nights ago. Their economy is so deeply tied to it now that when their government tried to ban crypto trading, the people rose up and protested and the government found it would crash the whole damn country if they carried it through and were forced to compromise with some mild regulations.

India despite its monstrously huge population is less than one percent. What happens when a decent chunk of their population actually jumps into crypto? Madness! Same goes for America but I don't expect it to happen; the government there is too arrogant and self-serving to let that happen or leave it alone if it does under their nose. Australia is making one of their biggest airports maximally crypto-friendly.

Oh and quantum computing is apparently no longer science fiction. The implications for the "crypto" part of cryptocurrency are absolutely terrifying and unpredictable.

---

The long and short of is that crypto is going to be nuts in 2018. In the meantime, for those of you that like useful actionable information, consider the following:

_{you see this?}

Patterns are a lovely thing, aren't they. Ethereum: watch this space.

Peace out.

@edumurphy