During the last couple of days, this was the picture that I've had in my mind most of the time. And it's kinda weird how relaxed I stayed while "losing" 50% of my crypto investments within pretty much one month. Why is this - and why is everybody who says "I told you it's jsut a bubble" just wrong?

Recap

So, let's have a look at what happened in January that caused this massacre for crypto - Bitcoin itself was bad, but many other cryptos went through even more of a valley of tears. We've got the following news:

• Regulation in China
• Regulation in Korea
• Some of the bigger sites accepting Bitcoin stopping support
• Roll-over of the January Bitcoin future contracts
• Prodeum exit scam
• Tether FUD
• Regulation in India

and, of course, a lot of repeating comments about Bitcoin and crypto just being a bubble, ponzi, or whatever you like. Wow, that is a whole lot of negative news for one month only.

Otoh, we've also seen some cool new projects coming up (especially in the ICO space), transaction fees on Ethereum dropping to a somewhat normal level, the official announcement of the Petro and a lot of people working in the space trying to back the value of cryptos by providing positive comments.

What actually changed

Pretty much nothing. For the biggest part, these news of course have an impact on what you can do with cryptos right now, but if we look at the core of it, that anyway isn't all that much. Some societies like Venezuela or Zimbabwe have built a parallel economy based on Bitcoin or else, and that obviously hasn't changed (that's why Bitcoin is still trading around $20k on some local marketplaces). Sure, China trying to regulate the outflow of money from China does have an impact on the demand for crypto there. But honestly, they can't really stop it anyway. That's the beauty.

So, on our long-term journey towards tokenized economies and crypto as stable currencies, these news are actually close to irrelevant. I would be worried if technical issues would force huge, quick and dirty forks. But while we're all worrying about the money that we've won and lost (most of us multiple times), there are thousands of smart people working on solutions that will actually create a better world with fewer borders and more participation, decentralization and democratization.

Let's never forget what actually drives us here. And after all, we're still so early in the game - if the long-term proves us right, we're gonna benefit from this development at a ridiculous scale.

So, let's pull the sleeves up, do something meaningful, and in the meantime:

Don't panic.