Value over time.

Without a doubt, the first and foremost reason most people get into "crypto" is likely due to hearing about or seeing stories of people making astronomical gains in such short periods of time. People like Peter Schiff to this day, advocates Gold over Bitcoin and argues that Gold has intrinsically more value than Bitcoin - which he believes has zero intrinsic value and over time will trend to zero.

First, let's just recall that the digital age and internet age has seen the global market place shift to digitisation of everything and creating even more value. A cursory glance at the most valuable companies in the world will show that technology is a clear driving force for value creation, and the internet serves as the backbone of such value. Would it not be reasonable to rationalise that a medium of exchange should also experience the same kind of value growth as the top tech companies in this digital age?

Addressing the USP of Bitcoin and Crypto can be an endless discussion, but let's suppose you figured it out, or decided to take a risk. Do you think that making money is ever easy? Because that is what the crypto dream constantly throws at you, whether it's here on Steemit, or like in 2017 where alt-coins experienced enormous growth (and then gave it all back and more in the subsequent years). It isn't easy and for the most part, the same rules apply in investing in crypto as investing in the traditional markets. Time.

What does time really mean?

Time is money in the sense that everything we choose to do, (or not to do) has an opportunity cost. If we choose to spend all our on a car, it means we don't have money to purchase a house. If we choose to hoard our money instead of invest it, the money is being productive because it isn't improving our quality of life in any way, nor is it creating further potential value. The cost of leaving your money as cash increases over time, especially as central banking has continued to devalue and debase the fiat currencies aggressively with more and more QE and lower and lower interest rates.

You are left with few options. Either make even more money to try beat the inflation - (rising cost of living etc.) or try hedge your money against inflation.

Crypto experienced exponential gains because like with anything starting from zero, progression is initially fast, but begins to slow down as the overall size, complexity, market gets bigger. Bitcoin while small compared to market caps of say gold, has already experienced the bulk of it's appreciation in terms of % gain. The amount of money that is required to push crypto to multi trillion dollar market caps is obviously a whole lot more than it was to push the market from hundreds of millions, to billions.

The time taken for gains will also take longer and longer. This is because the price discovery becomes more and more over time, until the market has reached a real equilibrium with global market factors all taken into account. Take gold for instance, it, like Bitcoin is a anti-fiat asset but has had thousands of years to determine it's value and reach price equilibrium with respect to global market factors. Bitcoin may eventually rise to much higher heights, but the volatility will inevitably fall as price discovery becomes more mature. Obviously this could be decades away, and there are many fundamental factors which could also change the outlook.

The point is, don't just look at someone in crypto who got lucky in a short amount of time and dive in expecting similar results. Understand there are ebb and flows to a market which is seeking a place on the global financial stage and that the journey doesn't end over night. There are many things you can do to make life changing money in short amounts of time, not just crypto, and any of those things will require significant time investment into developing the right skill sets, knowledge, and experience to be able to execute. Successful crypto investors are the same, and bar the truly lucky ones, the people who have been around for more than one boom and bust cycle have shown that they understand the value of time.